Navy to study intuition in combat situations

NY Times, At War Blog:

The United States Navy has started a program to investigate how members of the military can be trained to improve their “sixth sense,” or intuitive ability, during combat and other missions.

The idea for the project comes in large part from the testimony of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who have reported an unexplained feeling of danger just before they encountered an enemy attack or ran into an improvised explosive device, Navy scientists said.

“Research in human pattern recognition and decision-making suggest that there is a ‘sixth sense’ through which humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them,” the Office of Naval Research said in an announcement late last month. The scientists managing the program — which the the naval research office is calling “revolutionary” — commonly refer to this mysterious perception as feeling one’s “Spidey sense” tingling, after the intuitive power of Spiderman.

“Evidence is accumulating that this capability, known as intuition or intuitive decision making, enables the rapid detection of patterns in ambiguous, uncertain and time restricted information contexts,” the office said, citing numerous peer-reviewed studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

... The impetus for the program comes from “reports and discussions with marines and soldiers returning from deployment” in recent years, said Cmdr. Joseph Cohn, also a program manager at the naval office. “These reports from the field often detailed a ‘sixth sense’ or ‘Spidey sense’ that alerted them to an impending attack or I.E.D., or that allowed them to respond to a novel situation without consciously analyzing the situation.” 

The Navy references the case of a company of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, who, after a Taliban ambush in the summer of 2006, said in hindsight that their intuitions had set off a warning. 

They also point to the case of Staff Sgt. Martin Richburg who, after sensing something odd about a man at an Iraqi Internet cafe, managed to save the lives of 17 cafe patrons from the improvised bomb the man had planted there. 

Of course, such intuition is not always correct, and one of the research program’s goals is to find ways to fine-tune it. The program’s results are expected to be used in cyberwarfare, unmanned drone operations and other areas in which members of the military are called to act in situations where reliable information is not available or where the amount of information that must be processed is overwhelmingly large....

People who survive combat usually have a good sense of situational awareness.   They see things that others may miss.  Indians used these techniques to track game or enemies in their area.  Getting troops to the point where they can recognize situations that suggest danger can make them more effective and can save lives.  The program looks like a useful exercise.

I recall that when out on patrol in Vietnam, I would pay particular attention to terrain that was favorable for setting up an ambush.  You just got where you would recognize those spots and try to avoid them, or become more cautious as you approached.   In Iraq, troops would probably notice that the kids were no longer on the street which was usually the sign that an attack maybe imminent.