The war against mother nature: companies repackage military products for disaster-relief, rescue applications.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: HOMELAND SECURITY - Company Profile

In 2005, it became clearer than ever that, whenever major disasters strike, the military services are going to be called upon to help save lives, protect property and provide emergency food, shelter and first aid.

As a result, products typically sold to military customers for use in combat are being re-marketed for disaster-relief operations.

One area of particular interest is command-and-control, such as deployable systems that allow the military services to communicate with civilian first responders.

Among the suppliers wing for a share of the military's disaster-relief budget is General Dynamics C4 Systems, of Scottsdale, Ariz. The company developed a "unit operations center" that was originally designed for the Marine Corps but also could be used to improve communications in the wake of a natural disaster.

The center comes with large tents, trailers, radios, power generation and other tactical hardware necessary for field operation. It can be set up within 40 minutes, said Kevin Chapman, General Dynamics' program manager. In fact, he told National Defense, nine of them have already been deployed to Iraq, and "34 more are being deployed even as we speak."

Although the center has not yet been deployed on a humanitarian mission, it would be very useful, said Kevin Holt, the project lead for Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Va. "What the Marines like about it is that it's a collaborative system," he said. "They can share data and make decisions two to three times faster than with older systems."

Marine units deployed to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina "asked us if we could get something down there real quick," Holt said. "But we didn't have anything available at the time, and they weren't trained to use the equipment anyway."

General Dynamics, however, is talking with other services about fielding the centers, said Scotty Miller, the company's director of integrated electronics and sensor systems. Discussions also have taken place with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.

"Imagine if they had something like this down in New Orleans," Miller said. The National Guard, police and first responders "all have their own command-and-control systems. This system can talk to all of them."

Thales Communications Inc., of Clarksburg, Md., is trying to position its highly successful military handheld radio as a product that could be useful in disaster relief. The AN/PRC-148 Multi Band Inter/Intra Team Radio (MBITR) was...