It looks like something a tech-savvy handyman could have built over a few weekends.

Consisting of little more than a screen, projector, speakers, demilitarized rifles and five-person, wooden shooting stand covered in carpet that hurts bare elbows, the Army ROTC's new Engagement Skills Trainer's (EST) primitive appearance camouflages its sophisticated capabilities.

The about $300,000 EST beneath ROTC headquarters in the Wagner Building is one of 29 that United States Army Cadet Command gave to ROTC programs throughout the country, said Master Sgt. Stephen Krivitsky.

The EST teaches soldiers gun safety and individual and group marksmanship skills among other things. To do this, it relies on its obvious components as well as its behind-the-scenes components, which include computer software, an infrared detector and "brain boxes," Krivitsky wrote in e-mail message.

The software supports wartime simulations such as storming a roomful of insurgents, while the detector identifies the edges of the screen and the signals coming from the rifles, instantly relaying the information to the software, Krivitsky wrote. When the rifles are fired, the brain boxes run the air compressor, which pumps air into the rifles to simulate the recoil of a shot. Additionally, when the rifles are fired, the software determines which person fired, where the shot hit and if a target was terminated, Krivitsky wrote.

The EST supports video-driven "shoot-don't-shoot" training simulations, including roomful-of-insurgents simulations, as well as computer-generated individual and group training simulations.

"The 'shoot-don't-shoot' scenarios are specifically driven for the advanced shooter ... to test the ability of the [shooter's] knowledge of the Rules of Engagement and to react to an escalating situation correctly with accurate and effective fires," Krivitsky wrote.

The Rules of Engagement include not shooting someone unless he or she is pointing a weapon at or otherwise threatening you, said Master Sgt. Stacy Skiles during a demonstration of the EST.

"Individual training teaches the basic skills of marksmanship, starting with safety. It gradually moves through a crawl-walk-run training methodology to hone those skills. It stresses the basic skills of shot grouping, breathing techniques, trigger squeeze, sight picture and weapon support," Krivitsky wrote.

In collective training, people "can be sent through over 125 different scenarios that require the team leader to identify fire control and distribution measures, identify sectors of fire and other parts of the engagement," Krivitsky wrote.

The EST's video-driven scenarios include those of room clearing, vehicle searching and crowd controlling, and its computer-generated environments simulate all weather conditions.

The EST is capable of supporting different demilitarized weapons, Krivitsky wrote. While its current arsenal consists mainly of demilitarized rifles, its also compatible with demilitarized machine guns, a demilitarized pistol, demilitarized anti-tank rocket and demilitarized automatic grenade launcher.

"The EST almost feels like a video game at times," Cadet Sgt. Kelly McManus (sophomore-communications) wrote in an e-mail message. "And having never really played that many video games, my reflex time was a little slower than it would have been because I got caught up in watching the situation rather than reacting to it as I might have if I was really there," she wrote.

The ROTC is planning on making the EST available to Penn State University Police and the Penn State Rifle Team.