Mission efficiency analysis: evaluating and improving tactical mission performance in high-risk, time-critical operations

An unconditional necessity for effective emergency response, military missions, and other high-risk, tactical operations is that missions are supported by highly capable management. This implies the need for an omnidirectional, continuous flow of information, ranging from the chief executive level to the team-on-site levels, and that information meets rigorous demands concerning reliability, availability and diagnosticity. Sometimes individual operators and sensor systems must without delay be allowed to affect decisions and actions of a senior commander. These requirements cannot be fulfilled unless new and innovative methods, tools and technologies are developed to support comprehensive evaluation and assessment of tactical operations. In this paper, we employed a new technique of analysing team decision making and mission resource management of units performing tactical emergency response missions. In a pilot study we investigated the performance of the mission efficiency analysis (MEA) technique by analysing the rapid response capabilities of tactical forces and tactical command teams The pilot study results indicated that the MEA technique supported this endeavour in an effective and evident manner. Using it in evaluating tactical situations will decisively impact on tactical performance and, hence, the outcome of tactical missions. Based on these results, we concluded that the MEA technique has the potential to be successfully implemented in larger scale tactical exercises, and in evaluating actual high-risk, tactical operations as well.