Neurocognitive Engineering for Systems’ Development - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 34

security systems. Other factors will be internal, such as their ability to communicate
and lead their personnel, their personalities, and their fatigue levels. An individual's
cognitive functioning, or how they think about the situation and the information
presented to them and how they translate that thinking into effective behaviors, will
be critical to their performance. However, as will be discussed, ensuring adequate
levels and sustainment of cognitive performance needed for mission success is non-
trivial and will depend on the development and integration of advanced technolo-
gies and understandings of human neurocognitive behavior that lead to the effective
design of socio-technical systems (i.e., complex systems accounting for both people
and technology).
The potential impact of environmental complexity on cognitive function can be
seen in the analysis of those military and industrial disasters where decision makers
need to interact with equipment and personnel in a stressful, dynamic, and uncer-
tain environment. Analysis of the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS
Vincennes in 1988 and the partial core meltdown of the nuclear reactor on Three Mile
Island in 1979 revealed that cognitive aspects of complex human-system interactions
can have dramatic and unexpected consequences (Cooke and Durso 2007). One of the
primary contributors in these and similar incidents was the highly dynamic and informa-
tion-rich environment enabled by advances in computer and information technologies
(see below for further discussion). Similarly, contributors to the complexity of future
sociotechnical interactions are likely to include the following: the increasingly dynamic
and nonlinear nature of the battle space; the adoption by the adversary of advanced infor-
mation technologies, such as the Internet, cellular telephones, GPS devices; nontradi-
tional approaches to warfare, such as the widespread use of improvised explosive devices
and suicide bombings; the high level of interactions between our forces and the local
populations and political leaders; and the envisioned nature and demands of future war-
fare, which will involve reduced manpower; greater availability of information; greater
reliance on technology, including robotic assets; and full functionality under suboptimal
conditions (McDowell et al. 2007). These challenges will fundamentally alter the bal-
ance and nature of the sociotechnical interactions in the emerging operating environment
such that meeting the cognitive demands posed by these environments will necessitate
the change from a model that primarily relies on personnel to one that involves a balance
between personnel and system. While such a shift may be necessary to provide the capa-
bilities needed on the future battlefield, it can also lead to new patterns of errors (Wiener
and Curry 1980) and impose new demands on systems developers.
From the materiel development perspective, the complexity of the aforementioned
security environment presents significant difficulties. It is widely believed that the
profound advances in computing, information and communications technologies, will
provide a path forward toward meeting those demands. Realizing such capabilities,
however, will require the research and development community to better understand
the impact that the complexity of the operational environment has on behavior and
to develop and implement systems that will best provide the capabilities required to
work in harmony with our personnel, while disrupting the capabilities of the opposi-
tion. More specifically, we believe that systems should be designed to work in ways
that are consistent with the function of the human brain, augmenting its capabili-
ties to compensate for and overcome its limitations and capitalizing on inherent