Book Description

This investigation reports the development of a target engagement reduction methodology that supports resource-efficient, live-fire gunnery evaluation on Tank Table VIII (TTVIII), the intermediate-level tank crew gunnery certification exercise. Through a series of multiple regression analyses, it was determined that TTVIII can be reduced from its current 16 engagements to 7 engagements. Scores on these 7 engagements can be used to predict 10-engagement-based TTVIII total scores with greater than 85% predictive accuracy. For Army National Guard (ARNG) units, the 7 engagements can be selected randomly. For Active Component (AC) units, however, the predictive subset must consist of specific engagements. For the ARNG, subsets consisting of as few as two engagements can be used to identify tank crews with little chance of achieving first-run qualification (Q1), and subsets consisting of as few as four engagements can be used to identify crews with a high probability of firing Q1. Both predictions can be made with 95% accuracy. For both the ARNG and AC, short-cut scoring models allowed the prediction of 10-engagement-based TTVIII total scores, based on subsets of any size, with calculational ease. It was concluded that more resource-efficient live-fire tank gunnery evaluation is possible in both the ARNG and AC without sacrificing evaluative validity. The magnitude of resource savings to be anticipated from use of the recommended resource-efficient methods was estimated.