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Raytheon BBN Technologies Wins Serious Games Showcase & Challenge with VESSEL Damage Control Trainer

The winning entry is VESSEL Damage Control Trainer, an immersive, game-based training environment that teaches damage control skills, shipboard communication and shipboard navigation to U.S. Navy recruits, without the costs and risks involved with live training.

Damage control is a critical ship function that must be conducted according to specified procedures to minimize damage and avoid casualties. A validation study conducted at the U.S. Navy's Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., showed that recruits who spent one hour with the VESSEL Damage Control Trainer reduced their errors in situational awareness, decision-making and communication by 50 percent.

The goal of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge is to identify innovative game-based technologies and solutions that improve training effectiveness. A panel of military, academic and industry gaming experts selected the 12 finalists, whose entries were displayed at I/ITSEC in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 2009.

The panel selected one winner in each of three categories -- business, government and student -- based on technical quality, playability-usability and how well the solution addressed a stated problem.

Raytheon BBN Technologies led the VESSEL development team under Office of Naval Research sponsorship, with contributions from Alion Science and Technology; Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc.; the University of Central Florida; IDEAS; and the University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.

Raytheon BBN Technologies is a research and development organization with expertise spanning information security, speech and language processing, networking, distributed systems, and sensing and control systems. For more information, visit www.bbn.com.

Raytheon Company, with 2008 sales of $23.2 billion, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 87 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 73,000 people worldwide.

Note to Editors:

For more information about the VESSEL Damage Control Trainer, visit http://www.bbn.com/technology/immersive_learning_technologies/vessel

    Joyce Kuzmin               Mark Gauthier
    Raytheon BBN Technologies  Raytheon BBN Technologies
    617.873.8120               978.325.7048
    jkuzmin@bbn.com            mgauthier@bbn.com

SOURCE Raytheon Company