Electronic Publications

[Schmedlap]

Zen Pundit posted an interesting question at his blog. He said that he was asked by Pressfield for views on whether integrating video and other features into an e-book would be desirable. After pondering that question and the responses, I wondered about doing the same for doctrinal publications.

Doctrinal publications are chock full of illustrations, but most of them add little or nothing to understanding. Here is a great example of a meaningless illustration that does nothing to clarify anything...


I'm sure all of the guys at ILE were scratching their heads saying, "I don't get this whole 'principles of war' thing" until they saw this.

However, lots of illustrations might be useful if they were animated (take, for example, battle drills, movement formations, et cetera. Or animations such as THIS ONE could be incorporated into technical manuals.

Just imagine if the PMCS table in a technical manual actually made PMCS stupid-proof. For each step of the process, a Solder could click on a link to seeing that step performed. By clicking on the fault in the electronic PMCS table, the 5988E could be instantly updated. As soon as it is updated, the team chief or one of his minions gets the information pushed to his device. The biggest problem that I noticed as an XO was that Soldiers knew how to diagnose issues and knew what parts needed to be ordered, but they couldn't make heads or tails of the 5988E, so most of the time was spent correcting it, re-explaining to them how to fill it out, and then repeating this process over and over because there is just something about paperwork that doesn't make sense to Soldiers (not a horrible thing, imo).

Feasible? Not feasible? Other ideas?

[patmc]

My favorite, from the MRE heater, in case you cannot find a rock, something is always an option.



Many FMs/TMs now include CDs or are just on digits to begin with. Including digital programs or features should be feasible. My boss in the MI Schoolhouse was working with a game development office to create some instructional videos/animation for use at OBC and CCC to illustrate different topics. Don't know if TRADOC or Army as a whole are moving this way, but some shops have started it.

A digital / self-completing 5988E would be nice, but the issues of computers, power, etc in Motor Pool are always constant. PDA, Crackberry, I-Phone, etc... maybe. In theory, a supervisor should always helps clear up paperwork, but PMCS was always more complicated than it should be, no matter how much leadership or CoC were down in the MP.

And that diagram you posted is clearly too robust and lacking in synergy. It needs to be more proactive, with synchronization and jointocity.

[OfTheTroops]

paper. I love books. You cant crack the screen. It doesnt have batteries and a million other reasons. It is near impossible to have a FM Library with the Army's rate of change and such. A kindle ebook reader might be nice. Reading from desktop/laptop is the worst. Wait one worse an audio-FM of your favorite instructors.... torture.
I do believe animation could be useful-ish. It would be a better way to go as you said the figures make little difference unless you are stealing one for a ppt. Then again it probably would not be worth whatever we would pay for it.

[Cavguy]

I'm with the others, PMCS seems the obvious choice for digitization. Get a PDA/Iphone, and have an interactive set of checks (with videos, if needed) Enter the results digitally and sync it w/the motor pool

Would require updating the MS-DOS ULLS-G system after thirty years though!

[OfTheTroops]

Let us not forget netcommand? Wireless on installation? in the motorpool? Eventually I would hope. You have my vote.
And i would like the e-reader with all applicable pubs preloaded and automatically updated.
Can you imagine the mess when the pda's go down? haha! bad enough when you cant print out the 5988e.
Do we have a strategic reserve of hardcopies for Y2K when all computers stop working? What shall we do?

[Schmedlap]

Can you imagine the mess when the pda's go down? haha! bad enough when you cant print out the 5988e.

No ####, there I was. In the middle of a 2-month rotation at NTC as a mech inf XO. Six months prior, I ordered all new turret and hull TM's. They arrived just before we put our vehicles on the rails. Every crew had the latest TM in mint condition. Then along comes my Bn XO one day in the middle of the central corridor and says, after spot-checking maintenance, "XO, you're all dicked up. None of your crews know how to do PMCS because none of them have TMs." Well, my quick response was, "sir, they don't know how to do PMCS, but it's not because they don't have TMs. I just got 28 new ones prior to deployment!" Well, that was not what the crews had told him. Irate, I then gathered up all of the crews and let loose with a solid minute of expletives in which I think I managed to touch every base in accusing them of violating DADT, insisting that they had feces in lieu of brains, and directing them to perform an impossible carnal feat. Then I went back to what I was doing with my Bn XO in tow, asking, "that's it?" Yup. That's it. They all "found" their TMs.

Games like that were commonplace. We don't have 5988Es. We don't have TMs. The mechanics are lazy. I annotated this fault, but the part isn't on order. But if the TM were a serial-numbered e-reader that would merit a FLIPL if lost, then no more claims of "my chain of command didn't give me the pubs I needed to do my job." If the 5988E were incorporated into it, then no more "we can't do maintenance because we don't have 5988Es." And if it's all electronically tracked, then when a fault disappears from the 5988E the XO can check to see why and then explain to the crew, "yeah, you dumb####, that was deleted because the fault you wrote down wasn't actually a fault - you just wrote it down to obtain another part to hoard." Of course, then I guess the risk is that they'll deliberately break the e-reader to avoid PMCS.

[Wargames Mark]

Electronic technical publications exist. I don't know about producing them for established doctrine (in terms of payoff), but for "emerging doctrine" and new TTPs that need to be diseminated quickly across the force, I think that electronic, mobile publications and courseware are a great way to go. There is already Army interest in training material being run on mobile devices.

[Schmedlap]

Electronic technical publications exist. I don't know about producing them for established doctrine (in terms of payoff), but for "emerging doctrine" and new TTPs that need to be diseminated quickly across the force, I think that electronic, mobile publications and courseware are a great way to go. There is already Army interest in training material being run on mobile devices.

I was downloading ETMs from the LOGSA website in 2004. But those were just digital copies with hyperlinked bookmarks. Nothing all that innovative. I was advocating integrating technical references with the supply system networks to streamline technical work.

In regard to doctrinal pubs, I think we should keep a firewall between between doctrinal pubs and training materials. Otherwise, the tendency will be for the authors to create a training device in the form of a doctrinal pub and for people to click through the training material rather than absorb the doctrine.

[Hacksaw]

FM 3-24
FM 3-07
I would imagine that FM 5-0 will also have an interactive multi-media supporting product...

The Army Campaign Plan when it was first operationalized...

Point is that this is fairly common any more... there is a contract on the street to retroactively develop similar products for existing doctrine... this isn't a thing of the future, except for the ideas regarding motorpool use... now that has real potential... I was shocked to hear that maintenance was still being run on ULLs... I was around when it was introduced early in my career and I'm retired

[OfTheTroops]

Pubs are digitized and so forth but I think accessibility is the next step. How do you get all this whizbang knowledge down to the bright Soldier if they want to read them and sharpshoot the LT. How many squad leaders sit in front of a computer all day or any real part of the day.

[Hacksaw]

Pubs are digitized and so forth but I think accessibility is the next step. How do you get all this whizbang knowledge down to the bright Soldier if they want to read them and sharpshoot the LT. How many squad leaders sit in front of a computer all day or any real part of the day.

A great many more than it seems you suppose... I would opine that far more Soldiers sit at their PC for some period most nights than do those who sit down with FM 3-24.2, and if a young soldier is apt to sit down for quiet evening with a doctrinal manual... he is equally apt to sit at his PC while doing it...

I wouldn't claim that interactive media is the solution to US forces not reading their own doctrine, but I would argue that nearly anyone could sit with the FM 3-24 product and in 3 hrs have a very good idea of the content of the manual, its main principles, and examples as to how it might be operationalized... I won't engage in the debate as to whether 3-24 is a good doctrinal solution (I like it for what it was intended, don't like it for how it is sometimes interpretted - but that's no different than any other piece of doctrine)... only that the accompanying digital training tool was very effective...

Whether anyone on this panel likes this approach or not matters little... this IS the way the Army is heading... it is intended to both improve intellectual access, physical access to the material and also to support distance learning/shortened resident PME instruction...

"Now I'm done" -