The military wants to closely study the cognitive function of elite Special Forces soldiers, also known as Green Berets, to learn more about how they make critical battlefield decisions — decisions the military compared to those made by pro athletes.

“This requirement is for computer-based testing that has been specifically designed to measure brain processes that are involved in a Soldier’s ability to make rapid, split-second decisions,” says a “market research” posting made public last month on a federal database on behalf of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). “Testable areas include perception speed, search efficiency, tracking capability, trajectory estimation, rhythm control, timing control, visual learning, instinctive learning, decision complexity, distraction control, impulse control, stopping control, and improvisation.”

USSOCOM wants to be able to compare the results to those of elite athletes, “as the microsecond cognitive processing and functional requirements within professional sports are the most comparable to the critical battlefield decisions that special operations Soldiers make, which determine success or failure.”

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The envisioned assessments will measure 56 people for three years for the 5th Special Forces Group in Kentucky.

The notice says that the military has done this type of cognitive assessments in the past, but found there was a “lack of valid testing protocols” among other issues.

In 2016 an official working group discovered “gaps” in the military’s quest for servicemembers’ cognitive information and recommended further research be done.

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While it was fairly straightforward to assess how a soldier does physically under battlefield or intense training conditions, the panel found “the impact of degraded cognitive function on the ability to successfully complete military tasks or meet mission objectives is less clear, and validated tools for objective assessment of the cognitive performance outside of laboratory setting are lacking.”

“Impaired ability to perform work or training tasks adequately, let alone optimally, has significant consequences for the Warfighter and the unit,” the group said [PDF].

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