Warfighter's Physical And Cognitive Challenges

The small combat unit comprises a highly complex system of systems that encompasses the individual Warfighter’s physical and cognitive challenges along with the organizational needs of the unit. The traditional systems engineering process of decomposing a system does not allow one to decompose then reconstitute the small unit into a coherent representation. Looking at Warfighter load on an individual basis does not solve the load issue in combat. The Warfighter and the organizations they work within are not a simple monolithic system. The interaction of effects on the Warfighter, personal equipment, Warfighter to Warfighter, organization, leadership, training, and their conveyances and missions create a highly complex environment difficult to appreciate and measure (Figure 1). The challenge is how to correlate the various aspects into a coherent and verifiable product that could be used across the Warfighter System of System enterprise.

The initial strategy is to create a quantitative assessment environment for the physical leg of

This would create a federated model design and enable a crowd-sourced refinement of the environment. The OpenSIM model would encompass the performance causal loop environment with Python acting as a loader to modify the characteristics of the individual under consideration (fatigue, sleep, endurance, anthropometrics, cognitive state, heat stress issues, and physical equipment baseline, along with the system of interest). The output would be endurance levels, restricts or enhances body motion, changes ability to manipulate, whether the system poses physical challenges (e.g. strains muscles, strains joints, chafes skin, heat stress issue, etc), impact on the Warfighter, physically affordability (can they use the system or does it pose an undue burden physically). The physical model would also feed the PM-SSI SEE (Soldier Equipment Effectiveness