Morgantown, W.Va. (November 2018) – NextGen Federal Systems was recently awarded a contract to help provide enhanced virtual training for military personnel. The effort is focused on adding virtual training elements to the Memorial Tunnel Training Complex, which is operated by the West Virginia Army National Guard and located in Galloway, West Virginia.
The 2,800-foot tunnel was formerly used as a two-lane highway tunnel until being replaced with an interstate bypass. According to the WVARNG, the tunnel is now a unique facility that provides several training scenarios including post-blast events, transportation mishaps, and weapons of mass destruction laboratories.
The enhanced training component developed by NextGen will support a range of Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE) incident scenarios that include fire, smoke, simulated screams of injured and trapped personnel to simulate possible crisis situations and corresponding decontamination, evacuation, and other safety/response measures.
“The Memorial Tunnel Training Complex already provides an extremely valuable training experience for our military and first responders,” said Joe Robertson, NextGen’s division manager. “We are really excited to assist our customer in taking this training to the next level.”
As part of the contract effort, NextGen will develop a hardware and software system to support virtual reality and augmented reality training scenarios to significantly reduce cost. The virtual reality-based training will support immersive distance learning and the augmented-reality based software will enhance onsite training by providing a multiplayer, augmented reality training component.
