VICTORIA Class Submarine Human-in-the-Loop Experimentation Plan

Command team personnel aboard submarines are faced with unique Command and Control C2 challenges imposed by the limitations of crew size and operating environment. Submarines are often described as operating blind with a high level of uncertainty which puts many constraints on the decision making capabilities of the command team Hautamaki, Bagnall, Small, 2005 Dominguez, Long, Miller, Wiggins 2006 Kirschenbaum Arruda, 1994. Research on submarine command teams suggests a number of difficulties related to data uncertainty and assimilation, environmental uncertainty, as well as team related issues such as workload and communication Hautamaki et al, 2005 Jones, Steed, Diedrich, Armbruster Jackson, 2011. To better understand the specific challenges of the Canadian Forces VICTORIA Class submarines VCS command team, Defence Research Development Canada DRDC Atlantic Research Centre completed a number of Cognitive Work Analyses CWA - including a Work Organization Analysis, a Cognitive Transformations Analysis CogTA and a Strategies Analysis Chalmers, 2010, 2011. These analyses revealed a number of C2 challenges related to the ease with which the Commanding Officer CO and Watch Leader WL were able to assimilate mission-relevant information to aid effective warfighting performance. These findings are in line with the cognitive difficulties identified by Dominguez et al 2006 who also found that the CO had difficulties assimilating information and managing the uncertainty inherent in submarine operations.