Shared situation awareness (SSA) is critical for counterterrorism teams. We examined whether a rich media condition (co‐located face to face) and a lean media condition (distributed email) differentially influence SSA at levels 1, 2, and 3 and team performance, in 24 co‐located and 27 distributed teams. SSA at level 2—knowing who the terrorist is and their location—mediated and SSA at level 3—projecting future terrorist actions—marginally significantly mediated, a positive relationship between media richness and team performance. SSA at level 1—knowing objects—did not mediate such a positive effect. A co‐located setting leads to more convergence on situation awareness at levels 2 and 3, whereas a distributed setting leads to more convergence on level 1.

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The changes in the security environment run parallel to changes in Humans and Artificial Cognitive Systems to meet these challenges. In military setting novel technologies in terms of high-speed missiles and the threat of anti-access areal denial capabilities, run parallel to more sophisticated fighter jets and air defense systems to counter such threats. Adverse conditions could involve loss of communication among some of the entities taking part in the mission and the sudden increased threat. Such changes require increased information processing (e.g. to understand the threat and properly sequence actions of each team) and sometimes a change of who coordinate the mission (e.g. because a formal leader is no longer available due to communication loss). While novel Humans and Artificial Cognitive Systems may be important to handle such situations, it is important to enable the use of the technologies so that they will actually have the effect of reducing threats. In this paper, we discuss some theoretical models for how Humans and Artificial Cognitive Systems can be orchestrated to enable the reduction of threats. We focus on the way the use of technologies are integrated. In this way, we keep the focus on the organizing dimension of Humans and Artificial Cognitive Systems use. Drawing on theoretical perspectives of organizational environment, we discuss some models of integration the use of Humans and Artificial Cognitive Systems. The organizational environment may vary along the following characteristics: uncertainty and ambiguity (Scott & Davis, 2007), where uncertainty can be divided into complexity (number of elements and number of relations among elements in an environment) or dynamics (the rate of change in elements in the environment; for a summary see Valaker et al., 2020; Grote, Kolbe & Waller, 2018; Luciano, Nahrgang & Shropshire, 2020). We discuss both human-to-human and human-machine-teaming as ways of handling such environmental contingencies. The following hypothesis are suggested: Clearly defining what situation is to be tackled could ensure using the available structures. E.g. not using a decentralized structure in high stakes situations. This criteria need however to be weighed against the practicality of using a centralized structure (Hollenbeck et al., 2018; Johansson et al., 2018).Utilizing Human-Machine teammates and developing organizational structures that incorporates their use in adverse environments (e.g. allocating Drones to Dull, Dirty and/or Dangerous tasks). This could also include increasing numbers and diverse Tech use i.e. from tool to team mate. This will impact: the conduct of operations; and the supervisors, coordinators and operators, who collaborate with these smart unmanned systems at individual level (e.g. adaptable working agreements), team level (peer to peer collaboration) and organization level (hierarchical collaboration).

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