SAGE System Mechanisms
There are no bicycle skills without bicycles.
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Personnel of organizations, like factories and power plants, for example, typically perform a variety of skills at any number of specific stations or offices designed to fulfill a group objective. While performing their duties, they interact with machines and with one another in any of a variety of ways, either face-to-face or via telephones, video, computers, fax machines, switches, gauges, or the like.
To train the personnel of such systems, or to conduct diagnostic tests, it might be possible, but impractical, to design simulators to replicate the entire system's structures and communication links. In such cases, the size and complexity of the operation could mitigate against construction of a separate simulation "chamber" in which to conduct the training.
If the simulator is too cumbersome to build, or costs too much, the best option might be to use the real system itself as the training vehicle. The personnel would perform their normal duties, but would deal with system problems in the context of a virtual operating environment using fabricated but realistic information.
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The SAGE system is a semi-automatic surveillance and early-warning air defense network, involving military personnel stationed at air, sea, and land radar stations, computer-based information processing centers, aircraft and missile bases, weather stations, and air route traffic control centers. Its task is to detect, track, identify, intercept, and/or destroy enemy aircraft -- functions not unlike tracking, intercepting, and hitting a tennis ball. (You can draw analogies with other ball sports, too, or with many non-sports activities.) For a more detailed look at the SAGE system, click here.
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In my day, training of the SAGE system was conducted with the personnel on site, using simulated versions of the air environment. I presume the procedure today is the same.
During the training exercises, the personnel take positions at their regular workstations -- positions such as radar screens and information-display consoles, and they receive data about simulated threats (such as approaching aircraft or missiles), just as it might be received from bona fide threats.
To conduct training exercises, representative problems are designed to simulate threats. A threat might consist of an attacking formation of enemy aircraft coming in off the Atlantic, or a cluster of bombers flying high over Canada. Another kind of problem might involve a single, unidentified aircraft moving close to an unauthorized flight zone in the US. Other problems could be made up of squadrons of incoming aircraft flying tactical attack patterns towards different parts of the country, such as Los Angeles or Atlanta.
During an exercise, data that simulates the threat is typically fed into the SAGE network via the relevant radar units, the units that would naturally observe the attacking elements. This wasn't the procedure early on, though. It didn't begin until one of our training specialists, Harry Silberman, thought of it. I can still recall that auspicious morning when Harry strode excitedly into the office to share his new idea with us. From then on, it was inputs at the radar units.
From the radar units, the data now flows along normal lines of communication to the personnel at their computer consoles. The personnel have access to a variety of elaborate displays of the air traffic -- displays employing special symbols to depict the various aircraft and provide information in suitable form needed by the personnel to perform their duties. The personnel have to respond appropriately to the fabricated information, make the proper decisions, and work together as a team as if the attack was real.
Each situation is treated as if it was a live operation and is dealt with according to the interpreted nature of the threat. If, say, the threat happens to be a lone aircraft flying in a suspicious manner, the task of the personnel is, first, to detect the craft (called a bogie), and, second, to identify it.
Under actual attack conditions, if ground stations are unable to make radio contact with the bogie or can't obtain the required identifying messages, an interceptor is sent aloft to secure its identification and, if necessary, take more aggressive action to force it to land, or to destroy it.
Under training conditions, an interceptor might be sent aloft, depending on the extent of the exercises. If the bogie represents a serious threat, fighter stations would be alerted, interceptors would likely be readied and sent aloft from appropriate air stations, and civilian agencies would be warned of the danger. In each problem, procedures would be followed that would best deal with the threat.
The training is interactive in that:
Instructors and monitors generally observe the proceedings, and records of the trials are kept and later analyzed.
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