This paper reports1on a case study comparison of a directmanipulation-based graphical user interface (GUI) with the QuickSet pen/voice multimodal interface for supporting the task of military force “laydown.” In this task, a user places military units and “control measures,” such as various types of lines, obstacles, objectives, etc., on a map. A military expert designed his own scenario and entered it via both interfaces. Usage of QuickSet led to a speed improvement of 3.2 to 8.7fold, depending on the kind of object being created. These results suggest that there may be substantial efficiency advantages to using multimodal interaction over GUIs for mapbased tasks.