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Tactical command and control (C2) operations under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, stress, and time pressure impose significant cognitive demands on the Tactical Army Commanders' (TAC) ability to successfully prosecute their missions. The objective of the present study was to apply Hollnagel's (1998) Contextual Control Model (COCOM) to the identification of time-critical Situation Awareness (SA) requirements for TACs engaged in time-critical tactical C2 operations. SA requirements relevant to the successful completion of a broad range of tactical C2 missions – convoy escort, checkpoint security, combat, and cordon and search – were identified. These SA requirements were then prioritized into a subset of ‘critical’ SA requirements and then further analyzed in terms of classifying them into one of four COCOM control modes (i.e., strategic, tactical, opportunistic and scrambled). Through this analysis, areas that impact the development of decision aids, and other forms of decision support techniques, for TACs were identified.

Temporal awareness is key to successful decision making in a wide range of command and control situations, yet little explicit support to maintaining temporal awareness is provided by Decision Support Systems (DSS) for time-critical decisions. In the context of simulated weapon-target scheduling, the present study compared the decision support gained from two display formats: typical geospatial display and temporal display. The results demonstrated that the temporal display facilitates scheduling performance though its beneficial impact seems to require greater familiarization.

The present study aims to investigate how teams respond to workload transition due to a sudden and unexpected event in a complex and dynamic command and control (C2) environment. The C3Fire microworld (Granlund, 1998), a forest fire-fighting simulation, is used to compare divisional (territory-specific) and functional (role-specific) teams. Workload transition is induced by the sudden appearance of a second fire. Results show that functional teams' performance decreases while their communication frequency increases following the workload transition. However, they are faster to detect the second fire. This pattern of results suggests that in the context of C2 environments, the impact of a workload escalation varies as a function of team structure (functional vs. divisional) and the type of task (fire detection vs. fire fighting).

Because of their intrinsic nature, it is fundamental to consider the temporal dimension when studying control in dynamic situations. However, the temporal aspect is often taken for granted and not accounted for in cognitive or control models. The present study aims to understand the role of temporal estimation in the control of a dynamic task, within the Contextual Control Model (COCOM). Particularly, the main objective is to evaluate how time pressure influences the estimation of available and required time. A dynamic situation, which includes two sub-tasks, the pursuit of a target and the avoidance of hostile contacts, is used. Results show that both available and required estimated times, as well as performance, decrease with increased time pressure. These findings suggest that when faced with a high level of time pressure, people adapt their strategies by giving up an offensive mode of control, in favor of a more defensive one, earlier in the game.