Battlefield Recognition of Armored Vehicles

Abstract

Accurate and rapid recognition of armored vehicles as friend or foe is critical to battlefield success. As evidenced by incidents in the Persian Gulf conflict with Iraq, the potential for fratricide from inaccurate recognition is immense, even under favorable environmental conditions. Specific training on critical vehicle cues can aid in enhancing correct recognitions, and turrets are a major tank recognition cue. To assess the effectiveness of turret recognition, 10 male active duty U.S. Army captains made timed friend-foe determinations of 144 tachistoscopically presented drawings of U.S., German, Soviet, and British tanks. Each tank was represented as either whole vehicle or turret, presented for either 100 or 500 ms, and from either a flank or frontal viewpoint. Viewing the turrets was generally as effective as viewing entire vehicles, but frontal turret views produced much slower and less accurate recognition than did flank position turret views. Additional training is recommended for rapidly observing these vehicles from frontal viewpoints. Greater concentration on developing flexible decision heuristics based on turret features is one way to aid this training.