Kini Villalon watched spellbound yesterday as Stephen McLaughlin demonstrated a ThermoVision Ranger Multi-Sensor device.

"Watch the monitor," he told her.

When McLaughlin aimed the camera-like sensor at a wall 20 yards away and the monitor clearly showed the folks walking on the opposite side of the wall, Villalon practically came unglued.

"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen," exclaimed Villalon, 30, who happened to be there because her mom runs the business center upstairs and told Villalon she had to take a look at the incredible stuff on display downstairs.

More than 1,000 vendors operated row after row of exhibit booths that took up every inch of space in Kamehameha Halls I and II of the Hawai'i Convention Center yesterday during the 127th annual conference of the National Guard Association of the United States.

The exhibition, which is not open to the public, featured everything imaginable in the way of weapons systems, virtual training and exercise gizmos, counterterrorism gadgets, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense equipment.

Frank Hoerster, with BAE Systems, showed off the new $2 million howitzer cannon artillery that's lighter, more mobile and more efficient in every way than the old 17,000-pound howitzer. Hoerster said that a year from now, Schofield Barracks will be the first Army installation to get the new cannon.

Elsewhere among the displays, Don Nimblett explained the newest thing in battlefield robotics, the 5,000-pound MULE — or "multifunctional utility/logistics equipment" vehicle — with a 25 mm cannon and anti-tank missiles.

"The robotic MULE needs an operator somewhere in the loop," said Nimblett. "Basically, it will follow, take commands — go from here to here to here — and this help the operator, who is off elsewhere and safe, to do reconnaissance and detect and identify the bad guys. But it will not engage on its own."

Nimblett said that fully loaded, the robot will probably cost in the $1 million range.

Meanwhile, Kini Villalon had moved on from the thermo sensor and she and her 13-year-old daughter, Tee, were captivated by a $30,000, 6-foot Stand Alone Patient Simulator that breathes, has a pulse, blinks and is used to train military medical folks.

"He simulates all types of injuries," said Jack Norfleet, with the Research and Development and Engineering Command, an Army research outfit that makes the mannequin.

"Whatever your imagination can throw at it — entrance and exit wounds, diseases, we can have him foaming at the mouth, we can have him bleeding from the eyes and the ears."

On the other side of the exhibition hall, Travis Esteban, 16, and Charity Eltagonde, 17, both of Waipahu, were helping out with the National Guard Youth Challenge Program booth. But that hadn't kept the two cadets from checking out the cool stuff at the other exhibits.

"We like the simulators," said Esteban. The two agreed that if they could take any exhibit home, it would have to be Raydon Corp.'s Convoy Training simulator with Geo-Specific Imagery.

With one of these, the two could seemingly tool about recognizable Middle Eastern structures and terrain inside an actual tactical vehicle with all the realism and none of the risk. According to the Raydon literature, the training simulator includes snipers, suicide bombers and homemade bombs.

For Esteban and Eltagonde, the exhibition was exciting.

For Villalon, who was still dashing from booth to booth, it was practically a life-changing experience.

"None of my family is in the military," she said. "I'm not in the military. But I'm thinking about it. This has opened up a whole new world for me."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.