Study in avoiding "friendly fire"

UC PhD students simulate friendly fire to learn how to avoid it

American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman famously claimed “War is hell.” At the University of Canterbury PhD students are deliberately setting out to simulate the hell of friendly fire.

In a laboratory used for human factors psychology research, doctoral students directed by UC Psychology Professor Deak Helton simulate friendly fire using near-infrared emitter ‘guns’, similar to the training systems used by the military.

Friendly fire, or what is often called fratricide, is when allied forces fire on their own personnel, and is a very real danger in modern combat operations. A related problem is collateral damage or firing mistakenly on non-combatants or civilians. For modern militaries, the statistics regarding friendly fire and collateral damage are problematic, Helton says.

“My advice is to avoid shooting wars. The reality is Sherman was right; war is hell and the fundamental trade-off may mean there are no easy solutions, especially in high-speed modern combat. My lab’s fundamental goal is to save lives, to reduce casualties.”

In a recent research study, published by the journal Human Factors, the UC research group demonstrated that, in some situations, friendly fire is likely caused by a loss of motor control, not a lack of recognition of the target. Trying to make the target more visible may not entirely eliminate these kinds of errors. This has implications for how to mitigate the errors. While modern militaries have been keen to use technology to improve recognition, such as transponder systems which transmit the identity of the person electronically, this may not prevent all errors and, if the technology is unreliable, may introduce new issues.

Helton says the fundamental problem is that the rate of fire (speed) and recognition accuracy are a real trade-off in some situations.

“If you are too slow to respond, you may take fire from an armed enemy. However, if you are too fast to respond, you may fire on friendly forces. The alternative to improving recognition is what soldiers refer to as fire discipline, artificially slowing down and taking the additional time to acquire a target, but this again comes with a potential cost of reacting too slowly.”

The research team has taken a computer-based task and applied it to live combat simulations developed in the laboratory. This involved having participants use laser guns and make “shoot” or “no shoot” decisions, while aspects of the “battlefield” were manipulated, such as the proportion of foes relative to friends that a participant encountered, Helton says.
“I’m personally inclined towards diplomacy to solve conflicts, but no-one wants friendly fire or collateral damage incidents to happen. Where our research is heading is trying to better understand what factors lead to more errors; is it emotional distress, cognitive load, environmental conditions, et cetera? Can we reduce them with technological interventions?”

The research, which is ongoing, has gained high praise from both academics and defense organisations worldwide; previous research by the group on the topic has received best research awards by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The lead researcher Kyle Wilson has presented the research at two international conferences and at the United States Army Research Laboratory in Maryland, US.

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