The Dangers Of Information Overload On The Battlefield

At Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, teams monitor what they have nicknamed “Death TV” — live video from Afghanistan. Doug Mills/The New York Times

In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly -- New York Times

When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.

But Air Force and Army officials now say there was also an underlying cause for that mistake: information overload.

At an Air Force base in Nevada, the drone operator and his team struggled to work out what was happening in the village, where a convoy was forming. They had to monitor the drone’s video feeds while participating in dozens of instant-message and radio exchanges with intelligence analysts and troops on the ground.

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My Comment: I must confess that over the years of editing this blog .... I have been overwhelmed with information .... and this blog is nothing when compared to the information that drone operators must filter through when they are looking at multiple targets from Afghanistan or from any other war zone.

My prediction .... information overload is going to be a growing problem as technology improves in obtaining data from a battlefield .... and there is very little that can be done about it.