I'm back from a lengthy trip and taking care of business. First order is this:
1. I've shut down my Facebook page and I'm working exclusively over on Google+. If you'd like to have regular social media contact, please join me at this link. Like I did on my FB page, I keep my G+ page semi-locked and non-public. https://plus.google.com/i/HfVhwUoQ4hw:pYALrRKlV1w 2. The next book in the WYLDE SAGA will probably be coming out in April or May; it slid back a little bit, and I have some business stuff I need to set in place first. But it will rock just as hard as the first two -- stay tuned! 3. I have winners for the TOO WYLDE promotion! To preserve their privacy, the knife was won by a world-class combatives instructor in the United Kingdom; the gunsmithing by Karl Sokol was won by a police officer in Utah, the hour consultation/conversation was won by a reader/martial artist in South Africa, and the T-shirt was won by a very cool gun-toting ass-kicking muay thai fighter who is a very fine Harley-riding gal! Stay tuned for the next book and more prizes; also please consider joining me on Google +Thanks for reading!Sixteen years later, the OODA loop and Boyd’s work and how to apply it to personal combatives armed and unarmed are the subject of endless articles and internet forum debates and the concept is an integral part for most credible combative training systems.
This wasn’t the case in 1996, when most of the established firearms instructors were weaned on Cooper’s Color Code. In several discussions with notable tacticians, I pointed out that the OODA loop didn’t necessarily replace the Color Code, but it certainly added an additional dimension for utilizing efficient information processing.
The OODA loop concept took hold in the tactical community (it had long been part of combat aviation, military psychology and strategic planning) after other instructors and writers found utility in the simplified model and joined me in spreading the word.
So today knowledge of the OODA loop is expected in any serious tactical practitioner.
The concept of situational awareness, which I also introduced in the same article, has grown significantly as well. Let me make clear I didn’t develop the idea, I took it from military psychology and combat aviation research and put the idea into the context of personal combat. Situational awareness is a topic of serious study for the military; applying Boyd’s model to personal combat raised questions the military has long batted around: What is situational awareness? Can it be specifically defined and identified? Is it an inherent trait or is it instilled? And, most to the point, can it be taught in training?
Based on the research, experimentation, and field testing I’d been doing since the late 80’s on how to utilize accelerated learning, stress inoculation, and pre-conscious processing to recalibrate habitual baseline states to enhance performance under stress, I went on to share those concepts in another 1996 article SHOOTING WITH THE MIND’S EYE in which I stated my position: yes, the components -- the critical path of the cognitive process I defined as situational awareness -- can be identified, and since those components can be identified they can then be enhanced and taught.
Among the organizations I shared this with was NASA. NASA is the lead agency for study and research of “situational awareness” and provides a clearing house for the various interested agencies like military aviation, the intelligence and law enforcement communities. I consulted with the Psychological Services Division of the Medical Sciences Branch of NASA. My consultation focused on how to apply the blend of stress inoculation, accelerated learning, pre-conscious processing and scenario based training I’d developed to parts of the Astronaut Training Program.
One of controversial (at that time) positions I took, in discussion with the top military and space psychologists and psychiatrists in the world, was that situational awareness, in my experience as a trainer, was one part genetics, one part life experience, and one part training; and that situational awareness could be identified in prospective candidates, and further enhanced or taught (installed) into astronaut trainees who lacked the operational experience and training of the candidates who came in from the hard-core Department of Defense flow (ie fighter pilots, combat veterans, test pilots, etc.).
The polite (i.e. “official”) response was: “That’s not our position The area merits more study, but we tend to believe that situational awareness is in large part a skill you either have or you don’t; if you don’t, all the training in the world won’t give it to you.”
The unofficial response, over beers in a famous astronaut bar also trafficked by the US Naval Special Warfare community, was: “Ah, bullshit. You can’t teach that.” And then a long pause: “…but if you could…”
I wrote my consultation report and then went on to do other things, among them develop a training program for installing situational awareness subsequently adopted by the South African Police Service (who, at the time, had more officer-involved shootings monthly than the US had yearly) titled “Mental Conditioning for Close Combat” and also taught a significant number of personnel involved in close protection, military special operations, law enforcement, and private sector security on how to enhance their own brand of situational awareness.
Over the last twenty years, I’ve received hundreds of phone calls, e-mails and letters attesting to the effectiveness of the situational awareness and performance enhancement training program from former students operating in America and many other countries.
Anecdotal evidence, yes, but then, I never claim to be a scientist, and those calls and letters are all I ever needed to be assured that what I was doing was not only working in the training environment but translating directly into usefulness on the street and on the battlefield.
I shared that information with the popular tactical/gun press in an article about situational awareness published in SWAT Magazine in 2007.
In August 2010, 15 years after my initial consultation with NASA, the project managers I worked with in 1995 now are in charge of the entire unit, and were good enough to take my nine year old son on the VIP tour of the training facility. Over lunch they told me, “Remember back in 95 when we were talking about situational awareness and human performance indicators? Situational awareness? We did a study you might find interesting.”
They sent me two documents detailing a study: “Human Behavior Performance Competencies” generated by NASA, and the ESA (European Space Agency). What this study did was focus on specific aspects of human behavior and performance essential to survival in the space environment, with particular emphasis on long duration space travel. One of the unprecedented products of the study is an easy to use matrix that identifies the human performance competency, the behavior, the behavioral markers, details and examples.
Situational awareness is one of the major human performance competencies identified. This is the first time that the top scientists and researchers from the world-wide psychological research community have come to a consensus definition of situational awareness.
In order to include it, they had to break down the components of situational awareness as they defined it, as shown in the graphics posted above.
What NASA is doing with this is using these behaviors and traits as tools in the selection and assessment of astronauts and crew selection for long-duration missions; they continue to add rigorously reviewed scientific studies on these traits. They also work in conjunction with their Training Division to enhance training to develop these attributes, and completed a peer-reviewed study and presentation on the effectiveness and implications of training situational awareness.
This can be an extremely useful model with extraordinary implications for law enforcement and tactical training.
There are two major competencies identified by NASA as principal sub-components of “situational awareness.” They are:
a. Maintenance of an accurate perception of the situation; and
b. Processing of information
Perceiving the situation in an accurate (usable) perception and processing that information adds up to a state of “situational awareness.”
What are some of the implications for situational awareness training?
If a behavior can be identified and deconstructed into components, it can then be reconstructed and woven into a training program.
One of the differences between this extremely useful model and what I’ve been doing is that I combine processing of information with the maintainance of the accurate perception; like the OODA loop, it’s all one flow from my perspective. Without efficient processing of useful information in the moment, it’s not possible to perceive a given situation, especially a dynamic situation like combat, accurately. So the two elements are interwoven.
My model for training and enhancing situational awareness focused on improving perception and enhancing cognition while under stress. These are the principal components of the baseline state of relaxed alertness and situational awareness as I've trained it:
So over twenty years, I’ve focused on simple exercises to install the skill, and test it immediately under stress and in open-ended scenarios to cement the skill in use under immediate onset threat to life stress. In my last post, I shared a simple exercise that installs one small attribute of the larger skill set.
What I find most exciting about this study is the model NASA’s best researchers came up with; in the same way the OODA loop is a model for decision making and maintaining situational awareness, the Human Behavior and Performance Competency Model is a model for breaking out the components of situational awareness as they define it.
So while some pieces of their definition might not necessarily meet the needs of personal combat, the model of the matrix they’ve created makes a template for us to fill in with the working competencies drawn from personal combat.
So – shall we create one?
Upcoming posts:
Part Two: The Matrix
Part Three: Training the Jedi
ps: I've been waiting for the last two years for permission to release this information; just received word this morning. More later....
Extracts used with permission from NASA. All other content copyright by Marcus Wynne (as is all material on this blog -- please respect that...)
PPS: Under "Better Late Than Never" I see that DARPA has finally come around to recognizing the importance of this skill set, though they are currently focused on the technological application instead of the human/soft-skill installation approach: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Accelerated_Learning.aspx
(Part of an occasional series on neural-based training for combative applications)
A friend recently sent me a comment from an experienced and skilled firearms instructor. The instructor discussed, briefly, the difficulty involved in maintaining peripheral vision (and total situational awareness) while focused on a pistol's front sight or a rifle's red-dot.
I thought I'd add my two cents worth on the portion that was missed in the initial post -- he identified the issue and suggested it might be mitigated through training, but didn't offer any solutions for the HOW-TO piece of doing the training.
So here's a take that may be of use from my work in enhancing performance for combat athletes/shooters and applying neural-based training to combative skill sets.
There's a difference between understanding intellectually the limitations the eye's structure puts on visual processing while under stress and actually calibrating in a USABLE way the individual constraints of a trainee's eye-sight, and then integrate that calibration into a training program so the trainee has a baseline and a yardstick to measure progress from.
So first let's get the baseline, in the same way we'd want to shoot a course of fire cold to establish the true skill baseline of a shooter. Traditional firearms training with intense focus on the front sight creates a physiological state with concomitant muscle tension, which can become a habitual state -- even a baseline state.
A useful place to determine what impact training/injury/genetics play on someone's vision is to first calibrate their normal range of peripheral vision.
Try this:
Stand behind the student and have them look straight ahead as though they are focused on their front sight. Pin your front to their back, extend your arms full length, and then bring both your hands slowly around to the front, into their peripheral vision. Have them say stop when they see both hands. Have them look to their left and right. Most students at this point will have roughly a 45-degree arc. Some may be narrower.
Then have them consciously relax the neck/shoulder/head grid, especially the traps, neck, eyes. You can test for actual relaxation by having the coach behind the shooter place one finger on the top of the student's head. When with minimal pressure from the finger the coach can move the trainee's head easily, the neck muscles are unlocked and the head is free to move. When you've demonstrated that they've unlocked their muscles (changed their physiological state), then do the same initial exercise in bringing your hands around into their peripheral vision. You will see dramatic increase calibrated by arm/hand position so that both you and the student can see it.
That shows baseline for peripheral vision. Within 2-3 iterations, you can change the baseline to about 180 degrees for peripheral vision.
That's the student's peripheral vision baseline. Peripheral vision shows movement, but doesn't provide precision for exact target discrimination. So let's further calibrate so as to determine that range.
Have the student again look straight ahead. Start from the relaxed maximal vision place. This time as you move your hands in, hold up two fingers on each hand. Continue moving the hands into the vision field, with the instructions to the student that they call out first when they can distinguish fingers, and then again when they can accurately count fingers on both hands while looking straight ahead and maintaining a fixed forward focus. This defines the vision range in which they can discriminate visually with a measurable standard.
The cognitive process of peripheral target discrimination interacts with peripheral to focused vision in this fashion: SOMETHING'S MOVING to A MAN IS MOVING to A MAN WITH A GUN IS MOVING to A MAN WITH A GUN WHO IS NOT ONE OF MINE IS MOVING. To use the fingers: SOMETHING'S MOVING to FINGERS ARE MOVING to FINGERS WITH AN EXACT COUNT ARE MOVING.
This exercises mirrors the cognitive process (or strategy) of target discrimination on the peripheral range of vision and is easy to duplicate in a safe context.
To train the neurology to expand the range of discrimination to the limit of human function as determined by the individual eye, one exercise might be to have the shooter engaging a target directly to his front. There will be two other targets, one to the left, one to the right, with significant separation from the center target.
Have the shooter engage the center target; number of rounds/placement up to you. Have the coach safely behind the shooter, starting the hands at the range of natural full peripheral. Have them move the hands in with fingers up -- when the shooter, while engaging the central target, can count the fingers AND add them AND determine whether the number is ODD or EVEN, then have them engage the ODD (left) target or the EVEN (right) target.
Shooters will find this confusing and challenging (which is the sign of real learning) and with practice discover a concrete experience of what their own baseline is for utilizing enhanced peripheral vision and target discrimination on their flanks. Several iterations will result in a significant improvement that is immediately measurable for feedback to the shooter. Utilizing video also enhances the learning experience with this exercise.
One LEO-SWAT shooter I worked with was able to keep his focus on his sights on a standard sight equipped MP-5 and put 2 rounds in the nose of a bad guy firing a shot gun at him while simultaneously keeping track of his partners to his left and right. I debriefed him immediately after the shooting, and we were clear about the retention of his peripheral vision and ability to target discriminate. That result's since been duplicated in many police and military shootings by people I've worked with in the last 20 years.
Try it out for yourself. See if it works or not. If it doesn't, bin it. Or ask for help and/or clarification.
Be careful out there!
cheers, m
