Fort Eustis, Virginia – By next year, Soldiers will have new tools to measure health, fitness and tactical readiness, among many other performance indicators.
Program Manager George Matuk and his research team at the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center are working to bring together wearable technology with a server filled with data gathered through years of analysis and in-depth research. Measure and Advance Tactical Readiness and Effectiveness (MASTR-E). to past Army performance programs.
Addressing an audience of approximately 800 officers and senior soldiers attending the annual Holistic Health and Fitness Symposium at Fort Eustis, Virginia, on April 26, Mattook said, Soldiers, Small units and, most importantly, their commanders.
“We’re tying this not just to health, but to mortality,” Matuk said.
Army Times previously reported on MASTR-E, a five-year Army science program ending in 2024. , communication, rest, and recovery in tactical training and deployment.
It is the largest known Department of Defense human performance science and technology program. The agency has budgeted him $100 million for the program, Matook said.
While the issue of protecting soldiers’ personal data when using wearable technology continues to be debated, Matook and colleagues emphasize aggregating performance data so that officials can review performance at the unit level. bottom. This meant commanders could see a snapshot of unit performance from individual to squad level and above. Personal identifiers can be removed at the front end of that data collection.
In 2018, the Department of Defense banned deployed military fitness tracking devices over concerns that adversaries could access location and other data to learn more about U.S. footprints and operations abroad. bottom.
Two key efforts in this program include quantified human performance measurements and the creation of small unit performance projections.
This performance feedback exists as part of how military services manage ships, tanks, and more. However, applying that framework to the performance of individual soldiers and small units required recent technological developments and a new emphasis on those armies and units.
Individual soldiers wear devices such as off-the-shelf smartwatches and fitness trackers. That data flows into Commander’s ‘dashboard’ view on your tablet or laptop.
Matook’s sample view of a “dashboard” has a speedometer-like color-coded gauge with needles ranging from dark red to dark green with shading in between. Red is bad. I like green.
Simplified examples presented to the audience showed the big picture physical and cognitive readiness scales and a subset of tactical outcomes with their own gauges.
This is useful for soldiers, squads, and even platoons and companies, but the more an army can equip multiple brigades and mine the data to see trends in the performance of thousands of soldiers, the more information they will get. can be collected, Matuk said.
Such data can affect the type of rations, the payload of soldiers, and the units called up to fight other units.
Similar to the Army Health Program, the Tactical Readiness Program analyzes four domains of predictors of performance and measures five domains of that performance outcome. Those areas are health, physical, social-emotional, and cognitive.
The five outcomes include Fire, Move, Hold, Navigate, and Communicate.
Within each predictor domain and outcome category, there are many factors and indicators that researchers analyze.
MASTR-E Soldier and Small Unit Performance Predictors and Outcomes:
predictor
- health: Immune System State, Gut Microbiome, Nutrition/Metabolism, Nutrition and Dietary Habits, Hearing/Vision, Sleep.
- social emotional: lifestyle, motivation, resilience, personality, trait influence, spirituality, mindfulness, impulsivity, stress reactivity, emotional regulation.
- Physical: cardio fitness, power and endurance, quality of movement, body size, flexibility, balance, strength and agility.
- cognition: attention, mental flexibility, decision making, spatial cognition, working memory, executive control, body structure.
result
- shoot: Accuracy and Accuracy of Fire, Weapon Stability, Acquisition/Engagement Time, Initial Fixation on Target.
- move: Luck march fatigue rate, Luck march recovery rate, other kill chain/virtual reality metrics, first lock on target.
- keep: heart rate variability, cortisol after acute stress, survival score, aerobic capacity.
- Navigate: Time to Destination, Route Efficiency, Orientation, Sector Scan.
- inform: Vocabulary Sharing, Vocal Time, Noise/Light Hygiene, Nonverbal Communication.
Source: U.S. Army Combat Capability Development Command
In 2020, researchers took 530 soldiers from the 4th Battalion of the 31st Infantry Regiment and the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division to a field exercise measuring training load, physical activity, sleep and recovery. Army Times previously reported that it did.
Since then, Mattuk’s research team has conducted a variety of other events. Some focused solely on shooting, while others were more comprehensive, analyzing various human performance factors.
Beginning in 2022, the team conducted pilot studies with Army Reserves and soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and the 513rd Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
From that point until November 2023, the team has collected data, refined the process, and is now finalizing the “dashboard” product for release in fiscal year 2024, Matook said.
2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division “Red Falcons” is providing the final feedback and selection process as researchers build a tactical readiness application to collect and study performance data, Mattook said. Stated.
As the health and fitness program comes online with 28 combat brigades between 2020 and 2023, researchers are making ongoing adjustments to the readiness application that accompanies the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program. I was.
They include features such as a meal builder, macronutrient target metrics, an appointment schedule for physical or mental health checks, and a fitness builder portion for training.
The idea, according to Matook and the senior leader of the H2F program, is to make the application device agnostic.
The Army has issued wearable tech such as smart watches, smart rings and fitness trackers for limited research. Many said they prefer to use them.
Within the physical realm, for example, the Tactical Readiness Program aims to automate army combat fitness test data to eliminate pen-and-paper records, increasing the burden of data entry for researchers and soldiers. said Mr.
The application also features athletic performance and screening protocols, as well as physical injury profile data for measuring athletic performance and alternative maneuvers or exercises in injured soldiers.
The analytical part of the MASTR-E project promises to take a deeper look at how training is affected by sleep, nutrition and stress. This application assists soldiers in off-cycle physical training by benchmarking individual soldier fitness test scores, measuring exercise training against combat rigors, and measuring stressors and rest.
“You have to know how to adjust[the teaching period],” said Matuk.
For example, if a unit is so overwhelmed with field training duties that most of its men don’t get enough sleep to be fully operational the next day, it raises questions for the commander, he said.
“Should I do this 20-mile rack or should I use this as a rest day?” Matuk said.
Leaders hope that the combination of MASTR-E and H2F will provide commanders with science-based feedback on how to answer that question.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a co-writing project on witness intimidation. . Todd is a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
