Accuracy Under Fire ( A.U.FIRE )

LAPD Officer Tim Pearce founded Accuracy Under Fire (A.U.FIRE) after his wife, Officer Kristina Ripatti, was shot and paralyzed in the line of duty. This tragedy led to lifesaving training technology, inspired by the TENS unit, a muscle-stimulation physical therapy device used for Kristina. Accuracy Under Fire repurposed that technology to deliver advanced haptic feedback that simulates injuries, enhancing realism in police and military force-on-force training. Our system uses wearable TENS unit (E-stim) sleeves that enable instructors to remotely contract limb muscles, instantly simulating the intense incapacitation caused by gunshot wounds or limb injuries in the heat of battle. This injury simulator's immediate feedback delivers real consequences, pushing trainees to handle extreme stress, maintain tactical accuracy, and solve problems under pressure in real time. It allows them to practice fighting back accurately and effectively while injured, providing invaluable training experience before it happens in real life. A.U.FIRE fosters stress inoculation and a survival mindset, while providing crucial experience in weapon handling, accurate return fire, and tourniquet application under critical conditions—preparing officers and warfighters to perform confidently in a crisis.

The critical gap in reality-based training is that current systems simulate the impact of a hit, but not the ongoing debilitating injury that must be dealt with in an ongoing gunbattle and fight for your life. This leaves police and military personnel mentally unprepared for the shock, pain, and physical and mental distraction and limb failure of a real wound, leading to cognitive overload, freezing, and poor decision-making in a crisis. Current training doesn't prepare them to "fight through" an injury while still under attack, creating a dangerous vulnerability. AUFIRE addresses this by using haptic feedback to simulate realistic, limb-disabling effects, thereby forcing trainees to build experience and resilience beforehand. This inoculates them against shock, ensuring they can maintain composure, perform critical tasks, and make effective life-saving decisions under the extreme stress of a real-world encounter, dramatically increasing their survivability and mission success.

In the first 2 years of sales, (Founder + 1 salesperson) have sold $900,000 worth of AUFIRE kits to 55+ law enforcement agencies and academies, including the US Marshals, the NY MTA, and the Georgia Public Safety Training Center (GPSTIC). Additionally, we have received confirmations of future purchases planned by the Los Angeles Police Department, the U.S. Air Force Security Forces, the U.S. Army, and the West Point Simulation Laboratory. A.U.FIRE is also being integrated into top training simulator companies, including MILO, TI Training, INVERIS, Dart Range, Bohiemia, Cole Engineering-CESI. With these integrations, AUFIRE will be distributed much more quickly to numerous national and international law enforcement and military agencies.