Field Investigation of Radio Network Usage at the Dismounted Infantry Section Level

The Soldier Information Requirements Technology Demonstration (SIREQ TD) project is an experimentation program to identify technologies that significantly enhance the performance of our future soldiers. One of the study series involved a 2 x 2 factorial comparison of the benefits of digital maps over paper maps, and the use of radios vs. no radios. Thirty-two Canadian regular force infantry soldiers performed force-on-force tactical assault missions in wooded terrain, with each soldier participating in all four test conditions. The radios were configured to operate in 4 subnets: 1 channel for each of the 2 Assault Groups (4 soldiers on a channel); a Section Commander/2IC channel; and an all-users channel. Note that in the no-radio conditions soldiers still operated the press-to-talk switch to allow recording of communications, but the speaker volume was set to zero. All communications were date/time stamped, identified as to the user and channel, and the audio was digitally recorded for later analysis as to the nature and content of the message. The study showed that although the type and function of communication did not change dramatically across the four test conditions, there was an increased amount of overall communication when soldiers carried radios compared to when they did not. Other quantitative results pertaining to communications, situation awareness, perceived workload, and team effectiveness are presented, along with subjective measures collected by questionnaires and focus group discussions.