An Assessment of Selected Army Technical Manuals

Five series of Army technical manuals were examined, and users of these books were interviewed in order to compare objective measurements with user attitudes. Soldiers at several installations expressed their satisfaction with the new Army manual format of proceduralized instructions in simple language accompanied by numerous line drawings. As demonstrated by the UH-60A manuals, technical manuals could be improved by reducing the extent of cross referencing between volumes. Further, it should also be possible to reduce page counts by including more information on each page. Verification of three major Army end items resulted in only approximately 20 percent of maintenance tasks being published without change being required. This shows the continuing need for 100 percent verification of technical manuals. More detailed guidance could improve the verification process. Poor durability of technical manuals is the most frequent user complaint, but this can be substantially improved without incurring unreasonable cost increases.