Reliability of a Cued Combat Identification Aid on Soldier Performance and Trust

Abstract

Personal combat identification (CID) aids have been developed to assist Soldiers in the appropriate allocation of lethal force. Because of the dynamic nature of the battlefield, CID aids may be situationally unreliable. The purpose of the current study was to explore the effects of varying the reliability levels of CID aids on Soldier performance using a simulated marksmanship trainer. Twelve Army ROTC students and two active duty USMC volunteers engaged in three separate “shoot/don’t-shoot” tasks using three separate simulated CID aids of different reliability levels (90%, 75%, and 60%). Improved target identification accuracy and reaction time were observed when the participants used more reliable CID aids. Higher trust ratings were associated with the more reliable aids. The results suggest that these types of automated aids may be useful in terms of both lethality and as a fratricide prevention tool, provided there is a high reliability associated with the system.