11 ms·

Advanced Situational Awareness [pdf]

280 points by graderjs 6y ago

austincheney 6y ago
Minor typo in table 3-4. Motor vehicle detection on a dirt road should read 0-500 meters not kilometers.
slenk 6y ago
Did they take it down?
- neither_color 6y ago
  I was able to open it, it's a pdf. Is it legal to re-upload and mirror somewhere?
  - vondur 6y ago
    It says this on the PDF itself: DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Yes, it is a US government publication released without classification or restriction. > DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
  - A_non_e-moose 6y ago
    Approved for public release, right in the cover
  - imrehg 6y ago
    Mirroring on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTzi24R524CKGQNNoDio7T1r6THhy3jYBcF2gWMSXpXCa/ARN32030-TC_3-22.69-000-WEB-1.pdf https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTzi24R524CKGQNNoDio7T1r6THhy3jYBcF2gW...
- graderjs 6y ago
  The pages, 1 JPEG each (in case the HN Top load kills the above server): https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.pdf.html https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.p... This link will self-destruct in 3 days :P ;) xx
- moelf 6y ago
  no, and I think they don't have any reason to. >DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
  - pupdogg 6y ago
    Isn't it a National Security issue if the document is public globally?
    - kube-system 6y ago
      No. The military has procedures to protect national security information (classification), and those have been intentionally not applied to this document.
    - openasocket 6y ago
      No, this is general doctrine material. By necessity you need to teach a huge number of people in your army about your doctrine and how it works, so it's a really hard secret to keep. And, if your doctrine doesn't work if the enemy knows about it, then it's not a very good doctrine. In the same way that if your encryption program is vulnerable if people can inspect the source code, your encryption program isn't very good. The only real risk is that your adversaries might "steal" your doctrine and use it to train their own troops. But generally a doctrine on its own isn't enough, you need an established tradition and officer corps, as well as the right tools and equipment to execute it properly. And those (especially a competent and well trained officer corps) are much harder to appropriate.
gshixman 6y ago
I've been my oldest child case with this very topic to the point they eye-roll me everytime I bring it up. To be clear, they often claim they've lost a shoe or toy just after literally walking past it or accidentally knocking it under a table or chair. I guess its also a prevalent issue for young adults as well as children now? (Table 2-1, specifically)
- jcims 6y ago
  There's a certain cognitive priming that I have to do in order to be effective at searching for things that I've lost. 'Think of where you had it last' doesn't really help because that's frequently a complete blank. Instead I need to project a mental image of the item into the space I'm searching to prime whatever pattern matcher is in my head. Without that my eyes will literally pass right over the object and not pick it out of the noise. My wife, of course, had no such limitation. 'THEY'RE. RIGHT. HERE.' a common exasperation of hers as our departure time and planned arrival time converge.
  - jvanderbot 6y ago
    I have a trick that helps me. I say out loud, "I'm looking for ____ " or "Where is ____". The vocalization focuses me, and hearing the word makes my eyes jump to the item if it's in field of view. Sometimes, I find myself stopped, staring at a part of the wall, not sure what's going on, but there is the item at the base of the wall in the corner. Just had to move my eyes more but my whole body was answering the question for me. I really do feel like I'm holding the reins of a big dumb animal sometimes.
    - jcims 6y ago
      That nonverbal commune with the dumb animal has happened to me a few times. The very first time was so loud and profound it really blew me away. I was in the bathroom early one morning and found myself staring blank-brained at my eyes in the mirror. Kind of like that sense you get when you suddenly realize you're looking into an open refrigerator, I knew I had just walked in there for some reason but it wasn't coming to me. Meds? No. Shower? I don't think so. Shave? ... ... *pokes out chin* ... man I'm looking a little rough ... and just then, as I start getting distracted with the unkempt dude in the mirror, my right arm raises without any provocation and *angrily* mimes brushing my teeth. Like three.hard.rakes across the grill and then back down. As soon as that happened it's like someone unclicked pause in my brain and everything flooded back. Brushing my teeth! So I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and as I'm dosing it up with a fresh blob I think wait...what the fuck was that? It was like my arm was possessed and tired of me being an idiot lol.
jkaptur 6y ago
I'm reminded of Amazing Military Infographics [0], particularly one of the kickers: "The United States Military is operating at a conceptual level beyond every other school of thought except perhaps academic philosophy, because it has a much larger budget." 0: https://medium.com/message/amazing-military-infographics-1ba60bdc32e7 https://medium.com/message/amazing-military-infographics-1ba...
- beckingz 6y ago
  This is incredible. " After a while you realize that this image could be used anywhere in any paper or presentation and make perfect sense. This is a graphic that defines a way of describing anything that has ever existed and everything that has ever happened, in any situation."
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    Except it’s not novel and it came from strategy consulting decades ago (the Zachman framework in particular, which was popular at IBM in the 80s). In fact it’s one of the main methods of describing an architecture framework, and a methodology I use daily doing EA / strategy consulting. Consultants are everywhere in the military. Especially the business / strategy / org behavior types. Anything the military does will have been done a hundred times before in industry — the military just needs it at goliath scale.
    - shoto_io 6y ago
      Yes. Many of these graphs reminded me of stuff I was producing as a strategy consultant. In some cases you wonder if organizations that have too much money spend it purely on philosophical questions, unrelated to any business reality.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        I think it's more of a "We're acting on some philosophy, even if it's just our own personal one." And if you're making million+ dollar bets on the basis of that philosophy, wouldn't it seem reasonable to pay six figures for a set of alternative philosophies to consider? Or, in concrete terms, the CEO who is successful once because they were lucky vs the CEO who has decades of success in wildly different environments, because they learned alternatives and chose the most apt at any time.
milliondollar 6y ago
Absolutely stunning example of work by some folks in DoD who clearly have "bullshit jobs." This includes diagrams and descriptions of how eyeballs work, quotes from Hemingway, and case studies of WWII operations. Can anyone imagine actually trying to train Joe based on this manual? A shining example of BS at its peak!
- bovermyer 6y ago
  Yes, I can. Having gone through military training, it taught me things that I didn't understand before, or only had an intuitive understanding and not a full understanding. If you're going to call a reasonable document bullshit, then I might be inclined to say you have a somewhat skewed lens on reality.
  - milliondollar 6y ago
    Each fact in the document may be true, but the document is so overbroad as to be useless. Who is it intended for? I mean, it is almosth philosophical in starting from how senses actually work from science. Each lesson included could / should be broken out for Joe to make the desired outcomes practical and achievable.
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      Why do we assume the everyman is unable to do the most basic of rational thought.
      - kahmeal 6y ago
        present day
        tryauuum 6y ago
        present time
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
benkoller 6y ago
Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and not just a "thing you have". Every professional field has one or another concept of the around it. I'd even go as far as saying it's one of my crucial (soft-)skills and has benefitted me greatly in my career, so it's great to see that I'm not alone with my interest in the topic.
- kodah 6y ago
  > Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and not just a "thing you have". It's definitely both, I don't know why you're trying to knock that some people either by birth or through their experiences are just better at something than others. I had Marines who had excellent situational awareness that could spot trouble or issues far before they became a problem and I had others that would accidentally a whole truck. They were trained, for the most part, the same way. I also disagree that situational awareness is a "soft skill". Having situational awareness, to me, means that you know a subject deeply enough to infer things about your environment from that knowledge. That would make it a very technical skill.
SavantIdiot 6y ago
How is your average soldier, as a non-college grad, going to internalize a 316 page document that covers everything from cultural, to environmental, to social political awareness on top of the physical and psychological demands? That's not rhetorical. I'm curious how this document is instilled in the short period of boot camp training before they are shipped off to their deployments.
- cl42 6y ago
  I'm not in the military so can't speak to this directly, but I've been in training scenarios where you have 100s of pages to "memorize". The trick here is to actually learn via repetition so you internalize much of the training in a way that it becomes subconscious. The same would apply to me asking a developer how to build an iOS app (random example) -- you probably have so much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding practices, etc.
  - lainga 6y ago
    Or it leads to a situation where the 2nd LT is reciting in his head "3-69 The process of listening is composed of Listening, Receiving, Attending and Understanding... 3-70 Speaking is the call to listen, the speaker has not communicated until the receiver interprets and understands the message sent..." while the guy in front of him is nervously telling him he's ordered a fire mission 50m from the wall they're behind.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    > you probably have so much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding practices, etc This. If I had to put numbers on it, I'd probably say: 4th grade = 250 pages (excluding social skills); 8th grade = 1000 pages; 12th grade = 2000 pages; bachelor's = 10,000 pages; PhD = 15,000 pages Then about 100 pages(?) for each year of work experience.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  What makes you think this document is aimed at an average soldier? It's a training reference. From this actual training serials are prepared which are aimed at average soldiers.
standardUser 6y ago
There's a typo on page 1-1. Second to last line has a misspelling of "Soldiers".
tolbish 6y ago
I noticed they have sex in the base level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, along with food and water. I think we will see movement this century on the topic of whether or not it is a human right.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  What could that possibly look like in practice? Something beyond legalized prostitution?
  - tolbish 6y ago
    Some imagine something like Westworld.
- nefitty 6y ago
  I think people are assuming some sort of coercive outcome if sex were to be considered a human right. What it might realistically produce are more lenient, practical and compassionate laws around sex work. For example, there are people who are lonely, possibly due to old age, illness, circumstance (incels), etc. What makes them less deserving of intimacy? What right does a society have to proscribe what services an individual is allowed to willingly provide? This is just another example of some of the hidden suffering that society predominantly refuses to counteract or even acknowledge.
  - tolbish 6y ago
    I just want to point out that the document has sexual intimacy as a separate, less important need than sex.
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      I originally thought your comment odd and out of context, but now that you mention it, the military's view on sex vs. intimacy hidden within these obtuse documents is a pretty interesting tidbit and entirely within the spirit of the article. This is a multi-million staff count, trillion dollar-a-year organization after all. It is about 80% male and skews very young.
jvanderbot 6y ago
This seems to be particularly polarizing. I take the doc as an effort to distill practice, user stories, and a little bit of background theory as required to keep things varied an interesting to various types of learners. There's the rote memorization (do hasty search not a horizon scan), and theory-to-practice (rods and cones for nighttime visual search). I also imagine that the intended audience for this book has not been exposed to some of the biological underpinnings of senses, and never had an explanation for why it was difficult to resolve colors in darkness. That facts are placed right next to actionable workarounds and right next to observable consequences is a pretty good writing strategy to educate practitioners. I can imagine (but have not experienced) some useful rules of thumb coming from this document that are pounded into minds until they are second nature. Range estimation, hasty search + follow-up search, rough ranges at which cigarettes are visible in darkness, speech is audible, and so on. That's gold for its indented audience.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
>>> And org charts frequently show up. Many of them go up to the President. Who wouldn’t put the President in their org chart if they could? I am now trying to work out how to fit the UK COBRA response unit into any of my Disaster Recovery Planning templates. They really do need spicing up. Maybe go with a sentence like "It is considered unlikely that we shall need to notify MI6 of any interruption to our service. The number just in case is 555-12345" See who actually reads these darn things.
- lazide 6y ago
  I've taken to putting something similar in job postings that require careful attention to detail (right after the section that talks about said need) - 'If you want to get considered, make sure to put the name of a mammal that flies in your subject line. Otherwise I will throw your application in the trash'. So far? About 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 does it. Tends to be pretty effective actually, helps a lot with weeding out the spam too. Most lead with the 'I would love the opportunity to work with your company' which is clearly just generic spam and they probably didn't even look at the job posting.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    I kind of like the idea, but I am imagining what my reaction to seeing it as I apply will be. I can't work it out now - wrong context. Probably assume that I would get a day long home test, or something. Anyway, Volaticotherium antiquus
    - lazide 6y ago
      That would definitely work - bat, flying squirrel, etc. You can cut and paste the question into Google and get the right answer, so you might be overthinking it a bit.
      - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
        I did cut and paste :-) I guess I am being cynical - signalling during the job process is really hard - for both sides, and I doubt there is a quick fix. But I like yours - it might be worth a try next time :-)
desktopninja 6y ago
Personally think we were more situationally aware pre mass ownership of smart/feature-rich phones.
openasocket 6y ago
It's kind of insane how many documents the armed forces put out like this. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages dedicated to one topic or another. Everything broken down into a template or series of steps, often with little mnemonic devices to help you remember things. Everything standardized and given official nomenclature. Want to know what an infantry platoon and squad does? Here's 826 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%203-21x8%20FINAL%20WEB%20INCL%20C1.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%203... . What about an infantry company? Here's 618 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN8519_ATP%203-21x10%20Final%20Web.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN8519... . And those just cover the basics of organization, movement, attack, and defense. Want to know how to call in artillery support? Here's 256 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN21932_FM_3-09_FINAL_WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN2193... . 92 pages on military deception: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN15310-FM_3-13.4-000-WEB-2.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN15310-FM_3-1... . 192 pages on recognizing aircraft by sight: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3274_TC%203-01x80%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3274... . 146 pages on "Army Ceremonial Music Performance":https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3102_TC%201-19x10%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3102... . There's just a ton out there if you want to dig around: https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TC.aspx https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TC.aspx .
- airhead969 6y ago
  Job security ftw. Even if it's useless in practice, churn it out to make General PHB happy.
- afandian 6y ago
  Maybe it's a form of organisational dissociation to deal with the horror of what's on the other end of the weaponry. If you were in a position of influence in the army would you choose to soul-search about bombed children or try and construct some meaning around "Figure 4-1. Movement of the staff and command bugler around commander of troops".
kepler1 6y ago
I wonder if people who consciously practice being more situationally aware, who went through some training (or are just naturally able to handle more thoughts and inputs at once) sometimes look at people on the street, lazily walking through an intersection slowly while staring at their phone, or just ambling through life unawares and think: wow, a lot of people are lucky to not be evolutionarily selected out each day. I think you start to wonder, how do many people in this world get through life sleepwalking? Not to say that this awareness = "superior", of course, many people have different talents and being situationally aware is just one such thing. And for some, not being situationally aware is necessary to allow some less tangible benefits to appear (creativity, relaxation to enable free thought, intangible problem solving, etc). Hopefully such people, by the way, have other people looking out for them. But sometimes, you wonder -- person XYZ on the street, neither paying attention, nor having someone who looks out for you as you talk your head off unawares and self-absorbed... What world do you live in?
- lamontcg 6y ago
  Yeah I cave dive as a hobby and the lack of situational awareness on and around our roads is abysmal.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Whats worse is knowing that I've done some things and realized I'm not better. Sure I sometimes use situational awareness and avoid an accident. However other times I do something stupid and only because someone else used situational awareness did we avoid an accident. Most people write the latter off as a rare thing, but I've recently had the insight it all balances out and humans are all equally bad at driving. Which is why I'm careful to leave 3 seconds between me and the car in front no matter how many people fill the gap - I need all the help I can get to stay safe and I don't care how much slower it makes me.
    - lamontcg 6y ago
      That latter thing is also situational awareness. You're aware of your own limitations and are actively managing in order to drive within them. You'll note that a lot of other people ride the bumper of the car in front of them sometimes getting within 10 feet. They aren't aware of their own limitations. You actually are better than those other drivers, even if you're not situationally flawless. There's a lot in that manual about the "soldier" understanding their own limitations. And lot of people drive around thinking that if they open up that much space they'll get cut off so much they'll never get to their destination. Don't know if there's a bit in here about harboring delusions about reality.
DSingularity 6y ago
“No matter how abstract they are, these pictures describe systems that the U.S. military uses to make optimal, efficient decisions about killing other humans.” And then they are shared with the Israeli military so they can be used to kill in Gaza! Hurray for humanity.
graderjs 6y ago
BTW what can explain how this Top drops 10 places suddenly? https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27107522 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27107522
- anotha1 6y ago
  dang
  - airhead969 6y ago
    Don't take the lord's name in vain, or he'll refer you to the guidelines. ;)
lamontcg 6y ago
Everyone who drives a motor vehicle in public should probably read this back to front. > 1-5. People emit certain conscious and subconscious signals indicating their mental states and intent. Humans tend to follow predictable patterns of behavior. Continued observation of behaviors and the surrounding environment reveals patterns that can be used to derive other information about the person or people being observed. The goal of this observation is to determine the relevance of the information provided to the matter at hand. > 1-6. Soldiers can observe indicators based upon an established baseline. Soldiers can identify the enemy among civilians. Baselines are established when the enemy is not present because the lack of enemy presence allows the observer to determine the most complete baseline. Consider the "enemy" here to be the idiot who is about to pull into traffic without seeing you coming, and the signal to be how they did an aggressive stop, they blew the line of the stop sign completely, and they're displaying aggressiveness and impatience. Your foot should already be coming off the gas and covering the brake pedal, and if you see them move forwards at all you should be already actively braking. Generally any vehicle waiting at a stop sign I mentally label as a possible threat, but you can often be better prepared when you observe someone's actions in their vehicle that seems different than baseline. You don't need to react as strongly every time you see a vehicle waiting at a stop sign at a cross street to you, but when you see signs of aggressiveness, you should increase your own defensiveness and preparation to act. I'm sure I'll hit the sections on visualization and preparation for action later. If you watch r/roadcam vids on reddit you'll often see accidents that are the counter example to this where people speed at a consistent 8 mph over the limit all the time, and don't adjust their velocity ever for hazards or even just intersections and are caught completely unaware when another vehicle that displays a deviation from baseline, immediately then does something really dumb and collides with them. Related article: https://gedandclaire.com/downloads/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads.pdf https://gedandclaire.com/downloads/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to...
- quercusa 6y ago
  For motorcyclists, it can be a life or death skill.
- lovecg 6y ago
  Immediately thought about that fighter pilot article as well. I read it some years ago and still have spontaneous moments of “better be careful with this lighting situation” or “let’s check the blind spots here extra carefully” when driving. Highly recommended, should be required driving school reading in my view.
airhead969 6y ago
I don't see how you can teach SA in a book. Plus, some people are hopelessly clueless and don't see subtle details as well as others. It's a nice thought to explain some trail signs, but experience, practice, and particular personal qualities likely prove more valuable to think independently. Primitive hunting, street and wilderness intelligence, and practiced SA in everyday life are probably the best teachers.
Abimelex 6y ago
Who else wonder if the "This page intentionally left blank." is either redundant or wrong, since the page is not anymore blank, written this information.
- airhead969 6y ago
  Military intelligence borrows irony from the private sector too.
- AnthonBerg 6y ago
  Perhaps it is done to start the book off with a reflection – This situational awareness intentionally left blank is no longer blank.
- vageli 6y ago
  This is a very common thing in text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page
Othello_Returns 6y ago
Impressive strategic analysis. But maybe get Clippy to spell check next time boys and girls. "Solders" lol
- batch12 6y ago
  I don't think a spell checker would have caught that since it's a word that's spelled correctly.
  - Othello_Returns 6y ago
    Perhaps so, but this example is definitely flagged as incorrect grammar.
    - batch12 6y ago
      Yes, that is true.
pizza 6y ago
It's interesting you bring this up. Norbert Wiener (coined cybernetics among other accomplishments) was once working on a kind of visual tracking system for the military, where a human in the loop would provide predictions as to where a plane were headed and this would be incorporated as a signal into the tracking system's prediction. I think ever since then you get a lot of ideas about using men as parts of machines, rather than the more Stalin-esque idea of making a new type of man
preordained 6y ago
I would say my most practical experience with increasing situational awareness came from getting into competitive Magic the Gathering. Misreading a card or a line of play = loss many times; it is very easy to miss a key variable on the board that could make all the difference and if you are the slightest bit inattentive or operating by rote habit, you will miss it.

280 points by graderjs 6y ago

austincheney 6y ago

Minor typo in table 3-4. Motor vehicle detection on a dirt road should read 0-500 meters not kilometers.

slenk 6y ago

Did they take it down?

neither_color 6y ago
I was able to open it, it's a pdf. Is it legal to re-upload and mirror somewhere?
- vondur 6y ago
  It says this on the PDF itself: DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Yes, it is a US government publication released without classification or restriction. > DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
- A_non_e-moose 6y ago
  Approved for public release, right in the cover
- imrehg 6y ago
  Mirroring on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTzi24R524CKGQNNoDio7T1r6THhy3jYBcF2gWMSXpXCa/ARN32030-TC_3-22.69-000-WEB-1.pdf https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTzi24R524CKGQNNoDio7T1r6THhy3jYBcF2gW...
graderjs 6y ago
The pages, 1 JPEG each (in case the HN Top load kills the above server): https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.pdf.html https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.p... This link will self-destruct in 3 days :P ;) xx
moelf 6y ago
no, and I think they don't have any reason to. >DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
- pupdogg 6y ago
  Isn't it a National Security issue if the document is public globally?
  - kube-system 6y ago
    No. The military has procedures to protect national security information (classification), and those have been intentionally not applied to this document.
  - openasocket 6y ago
    No, this is general doctrine material. By necessity you need to teach a huge number of people in your army about your doctrine and how it works, so it's a really hard secret to keep. And, if your doctrine doesn't work if the enemy knows about it, then it's not a very good doctrine. In the same way that if your encryption program is vulnerable if people can inspect the source code, your encryption program isn't very good. The only real risk is that your adversaries might "steal" your doctrine and use it to train their own troops. But generally a doctrine on its own isn't enough, you need an established tradition and officer corps, as well as the right tools and equipment to execute it properly. And those (especially a competent and well trained officer corps) are much harder to appropriate.

gshixman 6y ago

I've been my oldest child case with this very topic to the point they eye-roll me everytime I bring it up. To be clear, they often claim they've lost a shoe or toy just after literally walking past it or accidentally knocking it under a table or chair. I guess its also a prevalent issue for young adults as well as children now? (Table 2-1, specifically)

jcims 6y ago
There's a certain cognitive priming that I have to do in order to be effective at searching for things that I've lost. 'Think of where you had it last' doesn't really help because that's frequently a complete blank. Instead I need to project a mental image of the item into the space I'm searching to prime whatever pattern matcher is in my head. Without that my eyes will literally pass right over the object and not pick it out of the noise. My wife, of course, had no such limitation. 'THEY'RE. RIGHT. HERE.' a common exasperation of hers as our departure time and planned arrival time converge.
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  I have a trick that helps me. I say out loud, "I'm looking for ____ " or "Where is ____". The vocalization focuses me, and hearing the word makes my eyes jump to the item if it's in field of view. Sometimes, I find myself stopped, staring at a part of the wall, not sure what's going on, but there is the item at the base of the wall in the corner. Just had to move my eyes more but my whole body was answering the question for me. I really do feel like I'm holding the reins of a big dumb animal sometimes.
  - jcims 6y ago
    That nonverbal commune with the dumb animal has happened to me a few times. The very first time was so loud and profound it really blew me away. I was in the bathroom early one morning and found myself staring blank-brained at my eyes in the mirror. Kind of like that sense you get when you suddenly realize you're looking into an open refrigerator, I knew I had just walked in there for some reason but it wasn't coming to me. Meds? No. Shower? I don't think so. Shave? ... ... *pokes out chin* ... man I'm looking a little rough ... and just then, as I start getting distracted with the unkempt dude in the mirror, my right arm raises without any provocation and *angrily* mimes brushing my teeth. Like three.hard.rakes across the grill and then back down. As soon as that happened it's like someone unclicked pause in my brain and everything flooded back. Brushing my teeth! So I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and as I'm dosing it up with a fresh blob I think wait...what the fuck was that? It was like my arm was possessed and tired of me being an idiot lol.

jkaptur 6y ago

I'm reminded of Amazing Military Infographics [0], particularly one of the kickers: "The United States Military is operating at a conceptual level beyond every other school of thought except perhaps academic philosophy, because it has a much larger budget." 0: https://medium.com/message/amazing-military-infographics-1ba60bdc32e7 https://medium.com/message/amazing-military-infographics-1ba...

beckingz 6y ago
This is incredible. " After a while you realize that this image could be used anywhere in any paper or presentation and make perfect sense. This is a graphic that defines a way of describing anything that has ever existed and everything that has ever happened, in any situation."
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  Except it’s not novel and it came from strategy consulting decades ago (the Zachman framework in particular, which was popular at IBM in the 80s). In fact it’s one of the main methods of describing an architecture framework, and a methodology I use daily doing EA / strategy consulting. Consultants are everywhere in the military. Especially the business / strategy / org behavior types. Anything the military does will have been done a hundred times before in industry — the military just needs it at goliath scale.
  - shoto_io 6y ago
    Yes. Many of these graphs reminded me of stuff I was producing as a strategy consultant. In some cases you wonder if organizations that have too much money spend it purely on philosophical questions, unrelated to any business reality.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      I think it's more of a "We're acting on some philosophy, even if it's just our own personal one." And if you're making million+ dollar bets on the basis of that philosophy, wouldn't it seem reasonable to pay six figures for a set of alternative philosophies to consider? Or, in concrete terms, the CEO who is successful once because they were lucky vs the CEO who has decades of success in wildly different environments, because they learned alternatives and chose the most apt at any time.

milliondollar 6y ago

Absolutely stunning example of work by some folks in DoD who clearly have "bullshit jobs." This includes diagrams and descriptions of how eyeballs work, quotes from Hemingway, and case studies of WWII operations. Can anyone imagine actually trying to train Joe based on this manual? A shining example of BS at its peak!

bovermyer 6y ago
Yes, I can. Having gone through military training, it taught me things that I didn't understand before, or only had an intuitive understanding and not a full understanding. If you're going to call a reasonable document bullshit, then I might be inclined to say you have a somewhat skewed lens on reality.
- milliondollar 6y ago
  Each fact in the document may be true, but the document is so overbroad as to be useless. Who is it intended for? I mean, it is almosth philosophical in starting from how senses actually work from science. Each lesson included could / should be broken out for Joe to make the desired outcomes practical and achievable.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Why do we assume the everyman is unable to do the most basic of rational thought.
    - kahmeal 6y ago
      present day
      - tryauuum 6y ago
        present time
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

benkoller 6y ago

Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and not just a "thing you have". Every professional field has one or another concept of the around it. I'd even go as far as saying it's one of my crucial (soft-)skills and has benefitted me greatly in my career, so it's great to see that I'm not alone with my interest in the topic.

kodah 6y ago
> Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and not just a "thing you have". It's definitely both, I don't know why you're trying to knock that some people either by birth or through their experiences are just better at something than others. I had Marines who had excellent situational awareness that could spot trouble or issues far before they became a problem and I had others that would accidentally a whole truck. They were trained, for the most part, the same way. I also disagree that situational awareness is a "soft skill". Having situational awareness, to me, means that you know a subject deeply enough to infer things about your environment from that knowledge. That would make it a very technical skill.

SavantIdiot 6y ago

How is your average soldier, as a non-college grad, going to internalize a 316 page document that covers everything from cultural, to environmental, to social political awareness on top of the physical and psychological demands? That's not rhetorical. I'm curious how this document is instilled in the short period of boot camp training before they are shipped off to their deployments.

cl42 6y ago
I'm not in the military so can't speak to this directly, but I've been in training scenarios where you have 100s of pages to "memorize". The trick here is to actually learn via repetition so you internalize much of the training in a way that it becomes subconscious. The same would apply to me asking a developer how to build an iOS app (random example) -- you probably have so much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding practices, etc.
- lainga 6y ago
  Or it leads to a situation where the 2nd LT is reciting in his head "3-69 The process of listening is composed of Listening, Receiving, Attending and Understanding... 3-70 Speaking is the call to listen, the speaker has not communicated until the receiver interprets and understands the message sent..." while the guy in front of him is nervously telling him he's ordered a fire mission 50m from the wall they're behind.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > you probably have so much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding practices, etc This. If I had to put numbers on it, I'd probably say: 4th grade = 250 pages (excluding social skills); 8th grade = 1000 pages; 12th grade = 2000 pages; bachelor's = 10,000 pages; PhD = 15,000 pages Then about 100 pages(?) for each year of work experience.
chrisseaton 6y ago
What makes you think this document is aimed at an average soldier? It's a training reference. From this actual training serials are prepared which are aimed at average soldiers.

standardUser 6y ago

There's a typo on page 1-1. Second to last line has a misspelling of "Soldiers".

tolbish 6y ago

I noticed they have sex in the base level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, along with food and water. I think we will see movement this century on the topic of whether or not it is a human right.

dougmwne 6y ago
What could that possibly look like in practice? Something beyond legalized prostitution?
- tolbish 6y ago
  Some imagine something like Westworld.
nefitty 6y ago
I think people are assuming some sort of coercive outcome if sex were to be considered a human right. What it might realistically produce are more lenient, practical and compassionate laws around sex work. For example, there are people who are lonely, possibly due to old age, illness, circumstance (incels), etc. What makes them less deserving of intimacy? What right does a society have to proscribe what services an individual is allowed to willingly provide? This is just another example of some of the hidden suffering that society predominantly refuses to counteract or even acknowledge.
- tolbish 6y ago
  I just want to point out that the document has sexual intimacy as a separate, less important need than sex.
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    I originally thought your comment odd and out of context, but now that you mention it, the military's view on sex vs. intimacy hidden within these obtuse documents is a pretty interesting tidbit and entirely within the spirit of the article. This is a multi-million staff count, trillion dollar-a-year organization after all. It is about 80% male and skews very young.

jvanderbot 6y ago

This seems to be particularly polarizing. I take the doc as an effort to distill practice, user stories, and a little bit of background theory as required to keep things varied an interesting to various types of learners. There's the rote memorization (do hasty search not a horizon scan), and theory-to-practice (rods and cones for nighttime visual search). I also imagine that the intended audience for this book has not been exposed to some of the biological underpinnings of senses, and never had an explanation for why it was difficult to resolve colors in darkness. That facts are placed right next to actionable workarounds and right next to observable consequences is a pretty good writing strategy to educate practitioners. I can imagine (but have not experienced) some useful rules of thumb coming from this document that are pounded into minds until they are second nature. Range estimation, hasty search + follow-up search, rough ranges at which cigarettes are visible in darkness, speech is audible, and so on. That's gold for its indented audience.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

>>> And org charts frequently show up. Many of them go up to the President. Who wouldn’t put the President in their org chart if they could? I am now trying to work out how to fit the UK COBRA response unit into any of my Disaster Recovery Planning templates. They really do need spicing up. Maybe go with a sentence like "It is considered unlikely that we shall need to notify MI6 of any interruption to our service. The number just in case is 555-12345" See who actually reads these darn things.

lazide 6y ago
I've taken to putting something similar in job postings that require careful attention to detail (right after the section that talks about said need) - 'If you want to get considered, make sure to put the name of a mammal that flies in your subject line. Otherwise I will throw your application in the trash'. So far? About 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 does it. Tends to be pretty effective actually, helps a lot with weeding out the spam too. Most lead with the 'I would love the opportunity to work with your company' which is clearly just generic spam and they probably didn't even look at the job posting.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I kind of like the idea, but I am imagining what my reaction to seeing it as I apply will be. I can't work it out now - wrong context. Probably assume that I would get a day long home test, or something. Anyway, Volaticotherium antiquus
  - lazide 6y ago
    That would definitely work - bat, flying squirrel, etc. You can cut and paste the question into Google and get the right answer, so you might be overthinking it a bit.
    - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
      I did cut and paste :-) I guess I am being cynical - signalling during the job process is really hard - for both sides, and I doubt there is a quick fix. But I like yours - it might be worth a try next time :-)

desktopninja 6y ago

Personally think we were more situationally aware pre mass ownership of smart/feature-rich phones.

openasocket 6y ago

It's kind of insane how many documents the armed forces put out like this. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages dedicated to one topic or another. Everything broken down into a template or series of steps, often with little mnemonic devices to help you remember things. Everything standardized and given official nomenclature. Want to know what an infantry platoon and squad does? Here's 826 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%203-21x8%20FINAL%20WEB%20INCL%20C1.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%203... . What about an infantry company? Here's 618 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN8519_ATP%203-21x10%20Final%20Web.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN8519... . And those just cover the basics of organization, movement, attack, and defense. Want to know how to call in artillery support? Here's 256 pages: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN21932_FM_3-09_FINAL_WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN2193... . 92 pages on military deception: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN15310-FM_3-13.4-000-WEB-2.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN15310-FM_3-1... . 192 pages on recognizing aircraft by sight: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3274_TC%203-01x80%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3274... . 146 pages on "Army Ceremonial Music Performance":https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3102_TC%201-19x10%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3102... . There's just a ton out there if you want to dig around: https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TC.aspx https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TC.aspx .

airhead969 6y ago
Job security ftw. Even if it's useless in practice, churn it out to make General PHB happy.
afandian 6y ago
Maybe it's a form of organisational dissociation to deal with the horror of what's on the other end of the weaponry. If you were in a position of influence in the army would you choose to soul-search about bombed children or try and construct some meaning around "Figure 4-1. Movement of the staff and command bugler around commander of troops".

kepler1 6y ago

I wonder if people who consciously practice being more situationally aware, who went through some training (or are just naturally able to handle more thoughts and inputs at once) sometimes look at people on the street, lazily walking through an intersection slowly while staring at their phone, or just ambling through life unawares and think: wow, a lot of people are lucky to not be evolutionarily selected out each day. I think you start to wonder, how do many people in this world get through life sleepwalking? Not to say that this awareness = "superior", of course, many people have different talents and being situationally aware is just one such thing. And for some, not being situationally aware is necessary to allow some less tangible benefits to appear (creativity, relaxation to enable free thought, intangible problem solving, etc). Hopefully such people, by the way, have other people looking out for them. But sometimes, you wonder -- person XYZ on the street, neither paying attention, nor having someone who looks out for you as you talk your head off unawares and self-absorbed... What world do you live in?

lamontcg 6y ago
Yeah I cave dive as a hobby and the lack of situational awareness on and around our roads is abysmal.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Whats worse is knowing that I've done some things and realized I'm not better. Sure I sometimes use situational awareness and avoid an accident. However other times I do something stupid and only because someone else used situational awareness did we avoid an accident. Most people write the latter off as a rare thing, but I've recently had the insight it all balances out and humans are all equally bad at driving. Which is why I'm careful to leave 3 seconds between me and the car in front no matter how many people fill the gap - I need all the help I can get to stay safe and I don't care how much slower it makes me.
  - lamontcg 6y ago
    That latter thing is also situational awareness. You're aware of your own limitations and are actively managing in order to drive within them. You'll note that a lot of other people ride the bumper of the car in front of them sometimes getting within 10 feet. They aren't aware of their own limitations. You actually are better than those other drivers, even if you're not situationally flawless. There's a lot in that manual about the "soldier" understanding their own limitations. And lot of people drive around thinking that if they open up that much space they'll get cut off so much they'll never get to their destination. Don't know if there's a bit in here about harboring delusions about reality.

DSingularity 6y ago

“No matter how abstract they are, these pictures describe systems that the U.S. military uses to make optimal, efficient decisions about killing other humans.” And then they are shared with the Israeli military so they can be used to kill in Gaza! Hurray for humanity.

graderjs 6y ago

BTW what can explain how this Top drops 10 places suddenly? https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27107522 https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27107522

anotha1 6y ago
dang
- airhead969 6y ago
  Don't take the lord's name in vain, or he'll refer you to the guidelines. ;)

lamontcg 6y ago

Everyone who drives a motor vehicle in public should probably read this back to front. > 1-5. People emit certain conscious and subconscious signals indicating their mental states and intent. Humans tend to follow predictable patterns of behavior. Continued observation of behaviors and the surrounding environment reveals patterns that can be used to derive other information about the person or people being observed. The goal of this observation is to determine the relevance of the information provided to the matter at hand. > 1-6. Soldiers can observe indicators based upon an established baseline. Soldiers can identify the enemy among civilians. Baselines are established when the enemy is not present because the lack of enemy presence allows the observer to determine the most complete baseline. Consider the "enemy" here to be the idiot who is about to pull into traffic without seeing you coming, and the signal to be how they did an aggressive stop, they blew the line of the stop sign completely, and they're displaying aggressiveness and impatience. Your foot should already be coming off the gas and covering the brake pedal, and if you see them move forwards at all you should be already actively braking. Generally any vehicle waiting at a stop sign I mentally label as a possible threat, but you can often be better prepared when you observe someone's actions in their vehicle that seems different than baseline. You don't need to react as strongly every time you see a vehicle waiting at a stop sign at a cross street to you, but when you see signs of aggressiveness, you should increase your own defensiveness and preparation to act. I'm sure I'll hit the sections on visualization and preparation for action later. If you watch r/roadcam vids on reddit you'll often see accidents that are the counter example to this where people speed at a consistent 8 mph over the limit all the time, and don't adjust their velocity ever for hazards or even just intersections and are caught completely unaware when another vehicle that displays a deviation from baseline, immediately then does something really dumb and collides with them. Related article: https://gedandclaire.com/downloads/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads.pdf https://gedandclaire.com/downloads/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to...

quercusa 6y ago
For motorcyclists, it can be a life or death skill.
lovecg 6y ago
Immediately thought about that fighter pilot article as well. I read it some years ago and still have spontaneous moments of “better be careful with this lighting situation” or “let’s check the blind spots here extra carefully” when driving. Highly recommended, should be required driving school reading in my view.

airhead969 6y ago

I don't see how you can teach SA in a book. Plus, some people are hopelessly clueless and don't see subtle details as well as others. It's a nice thought to explain some trail signs, but experience, practice, and particular personal qualities likely prove more valuable to think independently. Primitive hunting, street and wilderness intelligence, and practiced SA in everyday life are probably the best teachers.

Abimelex 6y ago

Who else wonder if the "This page intentionally left blank." is either redundant or wrong, since the page is not anymore blank, written this information.

airhead969 6y ago
Military intelligence borrows irony from the private sector too.
AnthonBerg 6y ago
Perhaps it is done to start the book off with a reflection – This situational awareness intentionally left blank is no longer blank.
vageli 6y ago
This is a very common thing in text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page

Othello_Returns 6y ago

Impressive strategic analysis. But maybe get Clippy to spell check next time boys and girls. "Solders" lol

batch12 6y ago
I don't think a spell checker would have caught that since it's a word that's spelled correctly.
- Othello_Returns 6y ago
  Perhaps so, but this example is definitely flagged as incorrect grammar.
  - batch12 6y ago
    Yes, that is true.

pizza 6y ago

It's interesting you bring this up. Norbert Wiener (coined cybernetics among other accomplishments) was once working on a kind of visual tracking system for the military, where a human in the loop would provide predictions as to where a plane were headed and this would be incorporated as a signal into the tracking system's prediction. I think ever since then you get a lot of ideas about using men as parts of machines, rather than the more Stalin-esque idea of making a new type of man

preordained 6y ago

I would say my most practical experience with increasing situational awareness came from getting into competitive Magic the Gathering. Misreading a card or a line of play = loss many times; it is very easy to miss a key variable on the board that could make all the difference and if you are the slightest bit inattentive or operating by rote habit, you will miss it.