ATWO TRIAL GUIDANCE

Department of Applied Military Science (AMS)

ATWOP students will form teams of two (exceptionally a team may contain three students) to conduct a trial.  The objectives are to:

Permit the student, as part of a team, to design, conduct and analyze the results of a trial, or parts thereof (ie, a selected set of tests), of an item being considered for acquisition or to investigate a technological problem confronting the Land Force.

Permit an assessment to be made of the student’s ability to understand an aspect of military technology, think originally in confronting a problem, and report on the outcome of a trial activity.

Students will be expected to select a proposal from a list drafted in consultation with sponsors or propose their own topic of interest.  Topics must:

Be deemed relevant to the Land Force’s equipment programme, either as a developmental item, potential acquisitions item or to support life-cycle management problem investigation;

Offer the prospect of a completed evaluation within the time available for the evaluation or investigation; and

Call up no resources beyond the capacity of RMC or the project sponsor to provide, less the tasking of trial troops IAW the current LF trials programming process.

The trial should focus on examining operational user aspects of the item (stowage, human factors, effectiveness in specific situations/conditions, ease of use/maintenance of proficiency, training or maintenance ease and etc), or to investigate some technical problem in support of DGLEPM activities.  Alternatives to a user trial may include investigation of field reports about technical or performance problems.  A selected sub-set of tests of a larger user trial or evaluation or DRDC technical field trial is also acceptable   Potential examples include: examination of a modification, a component of clothing, comparison of two or more competing items on a specific aspect of performance, or comparison of alternative maintenance techniques, user procedures and even minor Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs), etc.