Military training technology making leap to civilian use.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security

Take a computer simulation of a tank shooting rounds. Change the tank into a fire truck, the cannon barrel into a water hose, and give the vehicle more speed.

Instead of a military training system that tells users when they have destroyed a building, now it's telling emergency responders when they have applied enough water to put out a fire.

Small businesses that have sold computer-based training systems to the U.S. military are now finding opportunities to convert their simulations to the homeland security and domestic first responder market.

Doug Wright of Mymic, a small business that specializes in modeling and simulation, created the Learning Enriched Virtual Environment product that takes soldiers into an Afghan home where they converse with its residents in a non-offensive manner while also looking out for dangers.

The underlying software was converted for port security applications. Truck drivers entering a port are taught how to look for hazardous material spills and terrorist activity, and other issues of concern to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It has sold its system to the Virginia Port Authority in Hampton Roads, Va.

Its Critical Incident Response Training Simulation for combat medics transitioned to a first responder simulation, and an Air Force operations center Games for Team Training became a police operations center.

The process of converting software from military-centric to domestic applications can take the company up to six months, Wright said.

"It all depends on how extravagant you want it," he said.

Dennis Wikoff, vice president of Defense Department programs at the training outsourcing company Adayana said, "once you have that command-and-control type structure built, and the simulations underneath, it's a fairly logical step to say, 'okay now this model is an emergency operations center.'"

The knock on marketing products to the domestic homeland security or private sector market has been that each jurisdiction, company or state is only one sale. That is quite different from a military service, which buys products in large quantities.

The good news for vendors is that many of these organizations are cash-strapped, and computer simulations can save them time and money.

Pat Carey, chief of staff for the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System Training Center, gave one example of how his agency is saving time and money with a simulation developed by Adayana.

The state has some 6,000 interoperable...