This thesis describes two approaches for using critiquing as decision support for military mission planning. In our work, we have drawn from both human-centered research as well as results on decision support systems research for military mission planning when devising approaches for knowledge acquisition and decision support for mission planning.

Our two approaches build on a common set of requirements which have been developed as the consequence of both literature analyses as well as interview studies. In short, these criteria state that critiquing systems should be developed with transparency, ease of use and integration in traditional work flow in mind. The use of these criteria is illustrated in two approaches to decision support in two different settings: a collaborative real-time war-gaming simulation and a planning tool for training mission commanders.

Our first approach is demonstrated by the DKExpert system, in which end-users can create feedback mechanisms for their own needs when playing a two-sided war-game scenario in the DKE simulation environment. In DKExpert, users can choose to trigger feedback during the game by instructing a rule engine to recognize critical situations. Our second approach, ComPlan, builds on the insights on knowledge and planning representation gained from DKExpert and introduces an explicit representation of planning operations, thereby allowing for better analysis of planning operations and user-controlled feedback. ComPlan also demonstrates a design for critiquing support systems that respects the traditional work practice of mission planners while allowing for intelligent analysis of military plans.