Date of Award

3-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Michael E. Miller, PhD

Abstract

Combat Identification (CID) in an air-to-air combat context is a highly complex cognitive task that requires the operator to make rapid, high consequence decisions. To accomplish CID, fighter aircrew must attend to and perceive a broad range of information while concurrently building situation awareness (SA) and conducting other tasks. While existing automated agents are available to help fighter aircrew with this CID task, they are designed for a very narrow subset of the overall task and are not well suited for human-agent teaming. An interdependence analysis of the human operator and supporting machine agents conducted for this task support the notion that the Orient step of the ObserveOrient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop is to the most consequential for improving reliability or efficiency of CID task performance. Modeling was performed to examine the CID task across existing system architectures to understand potential improvements that enhance human-agent team design for this task. More specifically, subjective logic was explored as a possible means of increasing the observability of a multi-agent interface that supports decision making in the CID use case. This approach was incorporated into the model to demonstrate potential utility. Initial findings suggest that further research on subjective logic should be conducted to understand the impact of this tool for improving multiagent system performance in future Department of Defense systems.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENV-MS-23-M-178

Comments

A 12-month embargo was observed.

Approved for public release: 88ABW-2023-0188

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