Need for Community of Interest for Context in Applied Decision Making Warfighter’s  Use  of  Context for Decision Making Peter S. Morosoff President, Electronic Mapping Systems, Inc. (E-MAPS) Fairfax, VA, USA Peter.Morosoff@e-mapsys.com Abstract - There is interest in building a community of avoid the problems of past failures, and (c) warfighters, who interest for Context in Applied Decision Making. need IT tools that use context in processing data to produce Warfighters have long exploited context in decision information needed for good decisions, can readily share their making. The mystery, therefore, is why the information needs, circumstances, and constraints with developers. technology (IT) community that supports warfighters provides so little IT that exploits context for decision Because of reductions in DoD funding, there is a pressing making. One possible answer is the lack of a forum such need to not repeat mistakes made in earlier IT programs and to as a community of interest that facilitates sharing (a) provide useful products as rapidly as possible. Indeed, simply among those who do or might develop IT that exploits making information on existing POR tools that exploit context context for decision making and (b) with warfighters. This in decision making easily available may be the most important paper   provides   background   information   on   warfighter’s   short-term product of this community. use of context and highlights an IT system that uses computer representations of context in order to facilitate II. WARFIGHTERS’ USE OF CONTEXT establishing a community for Context in Applied Decision Making. People in general seem to be naturally inclined to focus their own contributions to current problems and to be unaware Keywords – ontology; context in decision making; of and give proper credit to the intellectual and organizational warfighters; ICODES accomplishments of past commanders and others. The more data and information that is generated and available, the harder I. BACKGROUND it is to find relevant information. Napoleon is an example of an individual who was remarkably successful at creating a mobile A community is needed for Context in Applied Decision capability to (a) assemble and move with him maps, files, and Making because warfighters rely on context when processing other information that provided him with context that he could (b) then use in processing incoming reports and other data to data to create information and make decisions required for create the information he needed for battlefield successes. mission accomplishment. Further, for the last 20 years, However,   Napoleon’s   accomplishments in this area are also warfighters and IT specialists have collaborated to create and largely unknown. Anders Engberg-Pedersen writes in his evolve (a) at least one program of record (POR) IT system that dissertation   “The Empire of Chance. War, Literature, and the processes data into information based on context and (b) Epistemic Order of Modernity” [1] that: several such applications for advanced concept technology demonstrations (ACTD) and other science and technology Two wagons served the transportation of these maps, (S&T) efforts. Documents such as the 1998 presentation and later a lighter cabriolet was added due to its greater “Coping with Massive Amounts of Information: The Glare of speed. Moreover, Napoleons own wagon was converted War” produced and shared by Dr. Howard Marsh of the Office into a rolling office: drawers were installed for a small of Naval Research (ONR) are now impossible to locate. For reference library where he would also store reports from Paris. When the drawers were full, superfluous material the last 15 years, we should have been building on Dr. was cut into pieces and thrown out the window, which, Marsh’s   insights.     Instead,   we   continue   to   invest   effort   in   according to Odeleben, could result in a veritable replicating his research. “paper   rain.” [2]. A central concern was thus to organize the cartographic material in a practical way in DoD needs the subject community of interest so DoD can order to make it transportable and readily available. shift from fragmented, individual successes that are rarely exploited in later efforts to an effective system in which (a) Infantry in Battle [3], a book produced under the direction new successes build on earlier successes, (b) new successes of George C. Marshall when he was a colonel leading the STIDS 2013 Proceedings Page 170 Army’s   infantry   school,   is   very   clear   on   the   value   of   arrived shortly after the fighting ended and started interviewing understanding context when considering data and information. participants in the war. To   the   author’s   surprise,   those   he   Chapter   V,   “Terrain,”   opens   with   the   statement   “Maneuvers   interviewed who had served in the Vietnam War kept noting that are possible and dispositions that are essential are indelibly that fewer people and less equipment had been provided for written   on   the   ground.”     That   is,   the   terrain   is   a   context   for   tasks in Operation Desert Storm than the same tasks in the ground operations that, if understood, facilitates (a) predicting Vietnam War. Dr. Katherine McGrady, of the Center for what enemy can and might do and (b) what our forces would Naval Analyses (CNA), had been detailed to support I Marine benefit from doing and must do. Expeditionary Force (I MEF) during Operation Desert Storm. When asked about the less equipment and fewer people in My favorite example of a warfighter using context is when Desert Storm than in Vietnam, Dr. McGrady replied that the US Marine Corps Captain Frank Izenour determined the start salaries of people and the cost of equipment were rising while date of the major 1972 North Vietnamese offensive - now manpower was being reduced and the new equipment being known as the Easter Offensive. In the course of working with fielded was more capable than the equipment it replaced. The Capt. Izenour from 1982-6, I learned the specifics from him ongoing result was that senior leaders were counting on the directly. That he, in fact, made the prediction before the attack fewer people being able to make better decisions so that better is  documented  in  Marine  Corps  Colonel  Gerald  Turley’s book, operational effects could be created with fewer pieces of better The Easter Offensive [4]. Early in that book, while Turley is equipment. recounting his early days with the Marine Advisory Unit in Vietnam, he states that Capt. Izenour was convinced the North Additionally, the war participants discussed the volume of Vietnamese would attack sooner rather than later. data forced upon them. The G-2 (i.e., intelligence officer) stated that on the busiest days of the fighting, the intelligence How did Capt Izenour use context to predict what so many section received so many reports that they stopped counting more experienced and senior officers missed? The most them at 6,000 a day, and they could not and did not even read important element, as I learned from working with him, was all the 6000+ messages on those days. that Capt. Izenour was a reader and a thoughtful officer. When he got data and information, he thought about them and This led the author to develop the following drawing searched for implications and logical conclusions. In early depicting rising salaries and increasing cost of equipment with 1972, his assignment provided him access to a U.S. decreasing numbers of people and pieces of equipment as data intelligence center in Saigon where he viewed large maps that volume increases at an ever-faster rate. The conclusion is that used icons to represent the locations of North Vietnamese future IT after Operation Desert Storm would need the Army (NVA) units across and outside South Vietnam. These capability to process ever-increasing volumes of data into less maps showed NVA units positioned the length of South but better focused information that commanders would need to Vietnam’s   boarders   with   its   neighbors.  The   locations  of   these   make better decisions and produce better results with fewer units, along with the resources required to deploy and support pieces of equipment. If better IT was not produced, the cost of them in the field, produced information context that suggested the people needed to process the available data would make to Capt. Izenour that the NVA was planning an attack across DoD unaffordable. all of South Vietnam. The question was when, not if, a major country-wide attack would be launched. Capt. Izenour told me that opinions as to when the attack would come were varied. August and September 1972 were favored by many people with access to the intelligence. However, Capt. Izenour’s   information   context   included   the   monsoon seasons in South Vietnam. The monsoon comes to southern and northern South Vietnam at different times. The only period the southern and northern parts of the country were not having monsoons was in the three months of March through the end of May. Given that context, Capt. Izenour calculated the NVA would allow 30 days for the ground to dry and then launch an attack about April 1, 1972 across all of South Vietnam. In the actual event, he was off by only 24 hours. Unfortunately, because so few others shared his context and opinion, the Easter Offensive was a strategic surprise for the U.S. and significantly   advanced   the   NVA’s   objective   of   gaining control of South Vietnam. III. OPERATION DESERT SHIELD AND STORM: DATA OVERWHELMS CONTEXT In early 1991, the author of this paper was sent to Saudi Arabia to conduct a Marine Corps battlefield assessment of command and control in Operation Desert Storm. The author STIDS 2013 Proceedings Page 171 IV. USE OF IT TO EXPLOIT CONTEXT evolved with its latest version operating in a cloud environment. We now turn to successes in developing IT that exploits context warfighters use. ICODES’ use of ontology and software agents has also been exploited in the Extending the Littoral Battlespace (ELB) During Operations Desert Shield and Storm, U.S. forces Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD), the deployed to Saudi Arabia by ship. The process and methods Coalition Secure Management and Operations System for planning ship loads was well developed by the start of (COSMOS) ACTD, and other efforts. Operation Desert Shield. Stripped to its essentials, planning a ship load is an exercise in determining where to place V. CONCLUSION equipment of known dimensions using the context provided by a   ship’s   plan   (e.g.,   dimensions   of   a   ship’s   storage   areas   and   The role of context in applied decision making is well ramps). Given sufficient time, skilled load planners could established and there is a rich body of literature on the subject. develop good load plans manually. ICODES has demonstrated the efficiencies and increased effectiveness possible when context is exploited in IT systems However, Operations Desert Shield and Storm revealed that used by warfighters. A forum such as a COI is needed that no-notice wars such as the Gulf War provide insufficient time facilitates IT developers and others accessing literature and for manually planning and adjusting ship load plans as the each other. From the perspective of a community on Context situation develops. The fog of war extended to the deployment in Applied Decision Making, ICODES is important because its of forces. Units found that the transport ships they had been results include (a) significant reductions in the time to plan a told would carry their equipment and for which they had ship load, (b) improved detection of potential hazardous prepared load plans manually were replaced by other ships materials violations, (c) significantly fewer senior ship load with little or no notice. The context or layout of the new ship planners, (d) reductions in rental expenditures for piers and could be learned easily, but often there was insufficient time to staging areas for loading military equipment onto ships and (e) prepare a good load plan manually for the replacement ship. effective use of applied ontologies and software agents. From the perspective of DoD, a community of interest is important After  Operation  Desert  Storm,  the  Army’s  Military  Traffic   because it would facilitate the exploitation of past successes Management Command (MTMC), the command responsible and collaboration among ongoing and future efforts while for loading military equipment on ships, sought to develop IT contributing to better DoD efficiency. support for agile load planning for ships. The objective was to extend the context from people-based activities to computer- based activities. These agile load planning inquiries were answered by the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center REFERENCES (CADRC) at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal [1] Anders Engberg-Pedersen, “The Empire of Chance: War, Poly) at San Luis Obispo, California. For several years, Dr. Literature, and the Epistemic Order of Modernity.” Dissertation, Jens Pohl and his associates in CADRC had been Harvard University, 2012. experimenting with using ontologies to represent context and [2] Otto von Odeleben,   “Napoleons Feldzug (Expedition), Abschnitt collaborative software agents to exploit the context provided (Section) 153”. by ontologies. When data on the equipment to be loaded on a ship was entered into the IT application, software agents would [3] Infantry in Battle, 1934, War Department, Washington, DC. process the data based on the ontology(ies) and quickly [4] Gerald Turley, “The   Easter   Offensive:   The Last American develop an effective load plan [5]. Advisors Vietnam, 1972”. Presidio Press, Novato, CA The early experiments for MTMC matured into an [5] Kym Pohl and Peter Morosoff, “ICODES: A Load-Planning application that was first fielded in 1997 under the name System that Demonstrates the Value of Ontologies in the Realm of Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES). In Logistical Command and Control (C2),” InterSymp-2011, Baden- Baden, Germany, August 2, 2011. the intervening quarter century, ICODES has continually STIDS 2013 Proceedings Page 172