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Actually, rumor has it that the US Marine Corps started this whole thing with a patched copy of the old "Doom" first-person shooter. It occurred to somebody that, since you can design your own settings in the game, that somebody should create digital models of all our Embassies, which the Marines are responsible for guarding. That way, if any Embassy was seized and Special Operations Forces went in to recapture it, they'd have a 3-D model of the place that they could "walk through," and know how long it takes to run down a certain corridor, which way a door swings, how high a certain window is off the ground and so forth.
These days we have dedicated digital planning tools for just such uses, but it's another example of somebody finding a new use for something that already exists, then the new idea becomes mainstream (and profitable).
As for the comment about Google Earth, true enough; we've found commercial overhead images of US and UK bases in Iraq on captured insurgent computers, with things like command posts and ammo dumps labeled with coordinates (probably for mortar fire). The images were usually outdated, but big targets like those generally don't move around much. I gues we aren't the only ones who adapt and innovate...
