This post was originally shared on LinkedIn. I’ve expanded it here with additional context from the lecture. The talk was part of the Aalto Dual-Use Technology Forum.
I recently gave a lecture at the Aalto Dual-Use Technology Forum on how XR — and Varjo — ended up transforming military simulation and training. What made it worth talking about is that this is a dual-use story running in the opposite direction from the usual one. GPS and the internet started in military R&D and moved to civilian use. Varjo went the other way: a commercial product built for enterprise designers and engineers became the default choice for high-end military simulation.
Here’s how that happened, and what we learned along the way.
The demand side: why defense needed this
Three structural changes in modern warfare created large-scale demand for virtual simulation.
First, modern weapons systems are extremely capable and extremely expensive. Real flight hours cost not just fuel but airframe wear and maintenance. Guided munitions are expensive per shot. Some systems have ranges that make live exercise impractical — 5th-generation fighters operate almost exclusively beyond visual range, and certain weapons would require more airspace than any country’s training ranges can provide.
Second, military operations have become multi-domain. Air, land, sea, space, and cyber operate together, increasingly across national boundaries. Coordinating realistic joint exercises in the real world is a massive undertaking.
Third, the operating environment is increasingly transparent. Adversarial satellites and sensors observe live training. There are scenarios where you may want to never train certain capabilities in the open.
The result: militaries need to train more, in more complex scenarios, while spending less and exposing less.
The supply side: why XR was the answer
Traditional alternatives don’t scale well. Dome-projection simulators cost tens of millions of euros each, are tied to fixed locations, and take years to deploy. Screen-based training doesn’t replicate the real-world experience. Live training is expensive and many scenarios are impossible to safely conduct.
Headset-based virtual simulators solve these problems. They’re portable, comparatively inexpensive, and can be deployed close to where troops are stationed — even immediately before a mission. The U.S. Army’s RVCT program, with rows of headset-based simulator stations, is a concrete example of where this is heading.
The critical requirement is fidelity. If the visual experience isn’t convincing enough, the training doesn’t transfer. Varjo’s contribution was achieving the resolution and latency thresholds that made headset-based simulation genuinely effective for the most demanding use cases. A U.S. Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit study from the Pilot Training Transformation program found that student pilots who trained with immersive XR outperformed their traditionally-trained peers across all evaluated categories and received certification four to six months earlier.
When the performance differential is that large, adoption follows.
How fast it happened
Using the annual I/ITSEC conference — the world’s largest simulation and training event, with 16,000–18,000 attendees — as a barometer:
In 2019, XR appeared in the “Next Big Thing” showcase, present on a handful of booths. By 2023, Varjo headsets were on roughly 50 partner booths across the show floor. By 2025, XR was considered mature technology. The conversation had shifted from whether it works to deployment milestones, regulatory approvals, and scaling.
That is a short timeline for a technology to move from novelty to assumed infrastructure in defense.
Serving defense as a commercial technology company
Varjo sells a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product. The advantage of a COTS approach is access to the best available components and fast iteration cycles. This can enable performance at a price point and timeline that traditional defense procurement processes are not structured to deliver.
The reality, however, is that successfully serving defense customers brings accumulating requirements. Security certifications, supply chain compliance, governance frameworks — these grow over time. Meeting them while preserving the development speed that made the product competitive in the first place is the central tension for any COTS company operating in this space.
For Varjo, this has meant sustained investment in building the hardware and software security story: TAA-compliant manufacturing in Finland, the U.S. Air Force’s Certificate to Field process for our core software platform, and a comprehensive security posture spanning product, supply chain, and company governance. Those investments matured the company. The engineering rigor that defense required — code analysis, supply chain traceability, security certifications — is now part of our standard development process.
Having the full R&D and technology stack in-house, from custom sensor design through the software platform, has been essential. It’s what allows Varjo to both push the performance envelope and create a secure offering that meets defense procurement requirements.