Sustaining and Enhancing High Optempo Performance of Soldiers in the Transformed Military

1. BACKGROUND The state of warfare over the past several decades has rapidly evolved, requiring an equally agile adaptation by Army forces. Two decades previous, threats to our nation came from superpower struggles initiated by large adversarial nations such as The Soviet Union. Today, emerging dominant nations and aggressive meta-national entities based within failing states are the greatest menace to the security and safety of our nation. Not only the nature of the antagonist, but also the characteristics of the threat have radically changed. Enemy forces have accrued asymmetric battle capabilities and have generated an environment of unpredictable and diverse exchanges. This new standard for modern conflict has led to the necessity for adaptability of both the individual and teams of individuals. Part of the response by the Army has been to assemble a dense information network that markedly increases data collection and dissemination. In a related effort, novel computer models and algorithms have been employed in the fusion of multimodal data into a display format that can be readily comprehended by the Operator. While the technological aspects of improved surveillance and information flow have been well explored, focus has recently broadened to include improved tasking abilities of individual Soldiers. In this endeavor, Soldier perceptual and comprehension skills are augmented via neuroergonomic technologies, training techniques, and informed sleep schedules.