Effects of Display Highlighting and Event History on Operator Decision Making in a National Missile Defense System Application

A proposed display for the National Missile Defense (NMD) task was developed to aid operator decision making. Subjects were required to monitor a simulated battle, consisting of launches of enemy missiles against the U.S., and counter-launches of defensive missiles against these incoming warheads. Defensive missiles were not perfect at destroying targeted enemy missiles, there was an estimated probability of .20 that a defensive missile will miss its assigned target. The risk associated with the probabilistic outcomes was displayed to the operator as a distribution in part of the display. The counter- launches were accomplished by a tully automated system, with the human operator as a monitor. The subject controlled a pool of reserve missiles (which are limited in number), not included in the system automation, which were deployed when the subject determined that the threat called for such action. Subjects had to make risk- resource tradeoffs concerning the risk associated with the threat and the limited resources of the reserve missiles. Twenty military subjects saw 40, two minute scenarios, with two enemy launches of six missiles each. They were required to respond as to how many reserve missiles they wanted to withdraw at four times during each scenario.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH is the author of 'Effects of Display Highlighting and Event History on Operator Decision Making in a National Missile Defense System Application', published 2000 under ISBN 9781423552444 and ISBN 142355244X.