THE GROUND AWARENESS WARFIGHTING DECISION SYSTEM: A CONCEPT FOR A FUTURE INTELLIGENT DECISION AID FOR DISMOUNTED SOLDIERS

Abstract

This capstone report studied how the employment of artificial intelligent (AI) solutions, in conjunction with sensor data and higher enterprise-level machine learning (ML) algorithms, can improve tactical decision making, provide advanced targeting solutions, and recommend courses-of-action (COAs) for dismounted warfighters in austere environments. The team applied a systems engineering analysis approach to develop requirements and a conceptual design for an AI-enabled decision aid at the tactical edge. The team named the future capability the Ground Awareness Warfighting Decision (GAWD) system. The envisioned GAWD capability would provide a functional AI/ML backbone architecture for the transport of tactically relevant data at the edge for soldiers to process in real-time and analyze for targeting and route selection. In addition, the capability could monitor soldier health and provide this information to the Command. The future GAWD system concept would leverage AI, ML, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and on-body processing to analyze data to trigger real-time notifications and recommended courses of action (COAs) to dismounted warfighters on their end user device (EUD) or heads up display (HUD) to assist with timely operational decisions. The team conducted scenario analysis to explore the use of the GAWD system in three different ground-deployed soldier scenarios. The team studied ethical implications of introducing a GAWD system to military operations.