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Marc Giauque ReportingIt's paintball...but it's not a game. Some say it's about as close as you can get to the real thing. A North Salt Lake company is gaining a niche in the market for training police and military groups in urban warfare.
It's a simluated operation where the good guys have been told to take out a target.
Five men move in on an armed suspect, their goal to work together as a team, and to not get shot themselves. Bright splotches of paint from paintballs clearly mark who's hit and who isn't.
"Back up. Back up. Back up!"
On this day, Curtis Gorley, the simulated bad guy, is the only one painted. "They caught me off guard. When I saw a stack coming through, there was nothing to prep me for it, they were right there on top of me."
Urban Warfare Center Founder David Burnell says they've trained many military groups.
"Many of them have gone overseas directly from here. We become their second to last or last stop before they get on a plane to go to the desert."
Burnell, a former Air Force and Special Ops man says the trainers themselves are well trained.
"They have to be former military or former law enforcement."
And, he says, the Center offers even elite units training they're likely not to have had.
"We use suprise speed and action of violence to get this done."
They use sound, structures, lights, smoke and other props to make it more real. Burnell says the center is also now attracting some recreationists.
"Actually the market is clammoring for it. People would come and ask if they could use it. At first, there was no intention to open it to the public. But now, we are trying to break down the barriers to the market and be more approachable, because there is a bit of a mystique associated with a facility that isn't advertised that uses federal agents."
