Advanced Situational Awareness [pdf]

This is incredible.

" After a while you realize that this image could be used anywhere in any paper or presentation and make perfect sense. This is a graphic that defines a way of describing anything that has ever existed and everything that has ever happened, in any situation."

>Part of what makes military diagrams so fascinating is that they look a lot like the images civilians use to do their regular workaday jobs. It’s just software and hardware, after all, and there are only so many ways to draw a network diagram. Yet the scale of these systems is immense; the lines being drawn are between jets and satellites, not between a couple of web servers...No matter how abstract they are, these pictures describe systems that the U.S. military uses to make optimal, efficient decisions about killing other humans.

Great article, despite the sardonic tone I found the graphics actually interesting, like something that would be read out loud and discussed on Jocko's podcast. That last line, however, reminded me of just how far we've taken it with systems that stalk targets from the sky for weeks to be used as evidence to authorize drone strikes.

https://www.wired.com/story/palantirs-gods-eye-view-of-afgha...

This reminds me of the mixed anger and surprise that I felt during the Snowden revelations when I realized that internally, the NSA was using a bunch of goofy-looking crude slides to communicate about the Stasi-like domestic spying apparatus that they had built using taxpayer money.

I had such a good laugh with this. This was so good. Thank you!

Maybe it's a form of organisational dissociation to deal with the horror of what's on the other end of the weaponry.

If you were in a position of influence in the army would you choose to soul-search about bombed children or try and construct some meaning around "Figure 4-1. Movement of the staff and command bugler around commander of troops".

A friend worked as a physical trainer in the military and described things like boot camp and getting soldiers on board.

One funny thing she said was the moment they got off the bus, she had someone in her face in perfect military dress, screaming at her every minute of the day and night. She figured out later that they would take short shifts swapping off, getting in people's faces, then leaving and relaxing before showering and changing clothes and doing it again for a few hours.

They got recruits from every walk of life. They were taught every skill, not only how to march or make a bed military style, but also some had to learn how to brush their teeth.

Every skill is new to someone. I guess it makes sense to document everything so you can teach it and make it uniform.

Job security ftw. Even if it's useless in practice, churn it out to make General PHB happy.

It's to ensure organization knowledge get passed down.

I'm not in the military so can't speak to this directly, but I've been in training scenarios where you have 100s of pages to "memorize".

The trick here is to actually learn via repetition so you internalize much of the training in a way that it becomes subconscious. The same would apply to me asking a developer how to build an iOS app (random example) -- you probably have so much internalized knowledge that you can write a few hundred pages on UX, UI, underlying tech infrastructure, coding practices, etc.

What makes you think this document is aimed at an average soldier? It's a training reference. From this actual training serials are prepared which are aimed at average soldiers.

Video games and super hero movies. They start on them young.

Rote memorization enough to pass the exams, and situational training enough to memorize key behaviors.

100% memorization is neither achieved nor expected.

They're not. Read the preface, while the intended audience is all soldiers, the manual is geared towards trainers.

The value isn't in the content of the publication (hence why it's public), it's in the training that soldiers undergo to make the information 1st-hand nature.

Example--you can read about the OODA loop. Reading about it doesn't make you good at using it. That takes training, and the Army has specific exercises that helps a baseline soldier know the fundamentals.

Like with nearly all skills, start with first principles, ingrain them with drills and repetation, then build advanced skills based on those fundamentals.

Checkout the Combat Hunter program. It’s good example even though it predates this document.

I don't believe this is a part of boot camp, this is advanced specialized training. This looks to be a course teaching these concepts: https://www.benning.army.mil/Armor/316thCav/ASA/index.html . It seems to be open only to Sergeants through Captains, many of those will have a college education. From the course schedule it looks like this takes a month. It's not clear but it sounds like it's an all day thing too.

When I was in basic, we were all given STP-21-1 and expected to read it. While waiting for other activities (haircuts, range, etc) often we were told to read it. I probably read the entire thing from cover to cover twice in those 9 weeks.

Edit: I was also not a college grad at the time. People can still read without a degree.

How would Steve Jobs read this without a college degree?

I don't think the average soldier is expected to internalize the entire document. It's more a training tool, or maybe taken into the field as a reference if someone thinks it's relevant. One of my favorite army field manuals is "FM 3-05.213: Special Forces Use of Pack Animal". 99.999% of soldiers don't need to know that when an elephant's body temperature reaches 38.3 degrees celsius you need to let it rest, or the fact that the average working llama needs 4 liters of water per day. But if they ever find themselves utilizing war elephants (which is strongly discouraged in the manual!), they know that somewhere in this 225 page tome they can find information to help them succeed.

The last few chapters are all about training.

I'm sure you've experienced 300+ page textbooks in high school.

I am going to try to dispel a few things about this. "Boot camp" or basic training results in a basically trained Soldier. While in times of a severe national emergency, it is possible that a basically trained soldier may be deployed, in usual circumstances, even during war this does not happen. Soldiers in basic training are selected into Military Occupational Specialties (or basically your job in the military) as an example, 11B is the infantry. After basic training, soldiers are sent to their units and/or specialist schools for additional training particular to their MOS. For some enlistment types, there are exceptions to this, officer and warrant officer candidates go to separate schools and for some MOS there is OSUT which allows a soldier to remain in the same unit from basic through ait. These schools can take anywhere from a few weeks to months depending on the specialty. During basic training, a soldier is expected to read and understand several documents, primary among them, the soldier Blue Book TP600-4 https://adminpubs.tradoc.army.mil/pamphlets/TP600-4.pdf After basic training and individual training, soldiers may have need to memorize and reference things from many manuals but they are not generally expected to memorize large manuals as part of basic.

The requirements are a bit different for officers and warrant officers. The training of officers and warrant officers is much more academically oriented. A 152F, Apache attack helicopter pilot is required to basically memorize the entire Technical Manual for their aircraft as well as many details about Army procedure for radios, weapon engagement, airspace management, etc. There are also joint publications, that are shared across the army, navy, airforce, marines, etc (sometimes with NATO allies) that folks in certain roles (pilots, FACs, officers) must be aware of.

Hopefully you find this helpful.

Like all good Army manuals this one has a training plan! It starts on Chapter 12.

Seriously though. The goal isn't to make every soldier an expert. At the most this will be discussed for a few hours in Basic Training, and units that are in the training phase of their cycle can spend a little time on it.

Basic training is the Hello World of military training. When Soldiers aren't deployed the spend about half of their work hours on training that is planned and executed at the company (~120 person) level. The Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant will most likely incorporate this into other activities. Other specialized training programs (SAPPER, Ranger, SF, ...) will use this document extensively as part of their training.

Different branches tackle this in different ways.

It's probably important to note that each branch has more specific things they need to know. Much of the Marine Corps relies on cross-training to fulfill this demand because their goal is much more open-ended than the rest of the branches (to my knowledge it's something like, "seize forward operation bases and areas of operation".)

To put it in a metaphor: bootcamp is considered dipping your toes in the water, your MOS school is like getting in ankle deep, the fleet is being nose deep with only your clothes on. When you get to "the fleet" is when your real training will begin and it is unending; the only thing that changes over time is that you figure out your clothes are actually flotation devices (fun fact, they actually are). You will spend night after night in the field training, they'll institute artificial stress, and attempt to train you into dealing with it. They'll use simulations like paint rounds, explosions, medical evacuations, and simulation towns in group-training settings with real civilians doing all the erratic things real civilians would do when caught in the middle of a gun fight or normal operation. No expense is really spared, you will actually fight like you play and that is a regular mantra. I'm reminded of a time in 29 Palms where my unit airlifted a radio truck onto a mountain so they could broadcast on the other side of it, which is exactly what you would do in country if you couldn't get to the top of the mountain.

Aside from that you'll be subject to the typical "death by powerpoint" classes that continue to drive in some of these trainings, but they're always referring you to a manual to learn more from. When people do screw up, they'll usually make them teach a class to show everyone what they learned.

I don't know if there's an official statistic on this, but a majority of the training that is conducted in the Marines I would be willing to put three paychecks on is conducted by Lance Corporal through Sergeant.

The goal is to cross-train enough people and foster enough interest that a team can be mostly self-sustaining.

> Situational awareness is in fact a teachable/learnable skill and not just a "thing you have".

It's definitely both, I don't know why you're trying to knock that some people either by birth or through their experiences are just better at something than others. I had Marines who had excellent situational awareness that could spot trouble or issues far before they became a problem and I had others that would accidentally a whole truck. They were trained, for the most part, the same way.

I also disagree that situational awareness is a "soft skill". Having situational awareness, to me, means that you know a subject deeply enough to infer things about your environment from that knowledge. That would make it a very technical skill.

Yeah I cave dive as a hobby and the lack of situational awareness on and around our roads is abysmal.

> (creativity, relaxation to enable free thought, intangible problem solving, etc)

I think ASA is not exclusively focused on outer awareness. I think there's a significant component of awareness of yourself (strengths, emotions, thoughts) that's part of it, and associated with resilience etc. I also don't think that situational awareness, inner or outer, is exclusive with creativity, relaxation, free thought, intangible problem solving.

I think what you're missing here is that the "concrete outer world" can also be manipulated and conceived abstractly at a very high level. I think the "head in the clouds" creative is a stereotype, and exists, but is not representative, and is not a majority one, and there's plenty of super aware people who are also super creative. Me included. Also I think maybe many of those people who "shut away" in the inner (or phone?) world, can probably handle many inputs and thoughts, but it's a case of where they choose to put their attention. Surely there are some who deliberately isolate their senses in this way, because they are so very sensitive, and just haven't learned how to comfortable utilize it, or perhaps just not yet.

In good military fashion, Jeff Cooper (Lt. Col,USMC) developed a color code for situational awareness with respect to the possibility of conflict/combat. White: unprepared / Yellow: Relaxed alert / Orange: Specific alert / Red: Fight

Most people stay in Condition White.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Combat_mindset_and...

Absolutely. I'm a naturally anxious person which translates into observing the situation as much as possible before interacting, and I also have significant training in the OP material. Sometimes (often) this is a hindrance to enjoyment. I have to practice a lot of mindfulness to not get unreasonably upset/concerned at some behaviors.

The number one behavior that upsets me is in grocery stores: people who do not realize that their shopping cart placement is causing a noticeable blockade and others are squeaking by or (im)patiently waiting for them to move, or avoiding the aisle entirely. This is not restricted to any type of person either; just today I witnessed a young man in scrubs park his cart sideways in the center bread aisle, halfway through turning around, and then abandon it to walk to the aisle cap to grab something (which he analyzed for some time before deciding upon taking). My mom used to do this same thing and it always bothered me, except now I view it as not just an annoyance but an evacuation and movement hazard.

The other one that bugs me is when I see people stopping at an entrance/top of escalator/exit of elevator or similar choke point. Please, I know it's overwhelming to decide what to do/where to go next, but be aware of your immediate surroundings and move to the side as you figure out the rest.

For motorcyclists, it can be a life or death skill.

Immediately thought about that fighter pilot article as well. I read it some years ago and still have spontaneous moments of “better be careful with this lighting situation” or “let’s check the blind spots here extra carefully” when driving. Highly recommended, should be required driving school reading in my view.

There's a certain cognitive priming that I have to do in order to be effective at searching for things that I've lost. 'Think of where you had it last' doesn't really help because that's frequently a complete blank. Instead I need to project a mental image of the item into the space I'm searching to prime whatever pattern matcher is in my head. Without that my eyes will literally pass right over the object and not pick it out of the noise.

My wife, of course, had no such limitation. 'THEY'RE. RIGHT. HERE.' a common exasperation of hers as our departure time and planned arrival time converge.

Constantly being on a kid's case for not behaving/thinking like you do isn't likely to work out well unless you actually know where the disconnect is.

Not everyone processes or thinks the same way.

I think it's a form of dependency/laziness. The best approach I know is to not think for them and have them help themselves to get better at independence and self-/world-awareness.

Yeah, it is. Especially people posting comments to spoon-feed them an explanation of something rather than research it for themselves. It's a form of learned helplessness.

dang

I've taken to putting something similar in job postings that require careful attention to detail (right after the section that talks about said need) - 'If you want to get considered, make sure to put the name of a mammal that flies in your subject line. Otherwise I will throw your application in the trash'.

So far? About 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 does it. Tends to be pretty effective actually, helps a lot with weeding out the spam too. Most lead with the 'I would love the opportunity to work with your company' which is clearly just generic spam and they probably didn't even look at the job posting.

> I am now trying to work out how to fit the UK COBRA response unit into any of my Disaster Recovery Planning templates

In organisations supporting UK critical national infrastructure (e.g. power companies), a cyber response plan might involve contacting (or being contacted by) the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC [0]), who as a public-facing component of GCHQ will be part of the government chain of command up to and including the Prime Minister.

[0] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/

I was able to open it, it's a pdf. Is it legal to re-upload and mirror somewhere?

The pages, 1 JPEG each (in case the HN Top load kills the above server):

https://secureview.isolation.site/uploads/file2t3r.l46wc0l.p...

This link will self-destruct in 3 days :P ;) xx

no, and I think they don't have any reason to.

>DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Military intelligence borrows irony from the private sector too.

Perhaps it is done to start the book off with a reflection – This situational awareness intentionally left blank is no longer blank.

This is a very common thing in text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page

I don't think a spell checker would have caught that since it's a word that's spelled correctly.

What could that possibly look like in practice? Something beyond legalized prostitution?

I think people are assuming some sort of coercive outcome if sex were to be considered a human right. What it might realistically produce are more lenient, practical and compassionate laws around sex work. For example, there are people who are lonely, possibly due to old age, illness, circumstance (incels), etc. What makes them less deserving of intimacy? What right does a society have to proscribe what services an individual is allowed to willingly provide?

This is just another example of some of the hidden suffering that society predominantly refuses to counteract or even acknowledge.

It's a human right to have sex with people can give you informed consent to have sex with you. It is not a human right to have sex.

Yes, I can. Having gone through military training, it taught me things that I didn't understand before, or only had an intuitive understanding and not a full understanding.

If you're going to call a reasonable document bullshit, then I might be inclined to say you have a somewhat skewed lens on reality.

more BS than another CRUD app?

This is BS for you because you never faced reality where you simply cannot make assumptions, but must use references (this how knowledge is built over generation) such documents establish clear shared understanding to avoid situation like 10 people have 10 different opinions; what is or what is not an specific thing.