Simulating Lethality through Human Performance Data: Success Story from Infantry Marksmanship Training

Any military combat force must be lethal to effectively execute its mission. However, lethality is notoriously difficult to quantify. Surrogate measures are often utilized to infer how different equipment or training protocols affect the fighting capabilities of military forces. Although these measures are critically important, operations research more often focuses upon large-scale implementations than individual differences due to human performance. Still, there is enormous potential to apply operations research principles in support of micro-level applications, especially for marksmanship training. The current discussion functions as a successful case study in using simulation techniques to inform doctrine-level decisions for infantry marksmanship based on human performance outcomes. Foremost, the discussion begins with a problem statement describing the challenges of quantifying lethality as well as how existing combat simulations can better integrate marksmanship variables. Second, we describe the proposed alternative method. This approach uses a stochastic simulation to convert raw human performance metrics into a quantifiable chance of winning a combat engagement. Third, we describe the lessons learned from applying this technique to inform infantry training in the United States Marine Corps. Taken together, this approach represents the first time small arms combat modeling and human performance variables have influenced marksmanship training doctrine.