I’ve been reviewing my situational awareness material to prepare for a book project and a Zoom Master Classes for my existing instructors. I ran across this old video from 2017 which does an excellent job summarizing what we’ve been doing for 30 years.
What prompted my review was the recent release of the Army’s ADVANCED SITUATIONAL AWARENESS training manual, close on the heels of the Marine Corps SENSEMAKING training manual. Both of these manuals built on the foundation laid by the Marine Corps COMBAT HUNTER program which resulted in the excellent book LEFT OF BANG. And the approach of making operational the intellectual discussions about situational awareness that these manuals and training programs espouse support the work we do and have for a long time.
The difference is the emphasis on understanding the process of human perception, the cognition underlying that process, and, in our model, the importance of preconscious processing and pattern recognition.
These newer products have (finally) addressed the importance of understanding the perceptual process that enabled situational awareness, something we’ve been teaching and testing on the battlefield and mean streets all over the world for a long time.
For the references mentioned above:
NASA STUDY DEFINING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
