It is used for creating historically accurate terrains or I guess I should terrains based on the real world.
Basically punch in the latitude and longitude for an area like say Taiwan. Then set your scale 1.0 creates a 1 game mile to 1 real world mile, 1.5 is 1 game mile equals 1.5 real world miles, etc. Then choose to create a 64, 128, 256 or 512 mile map (SEA uses the 512 mile by 512 mile) and run the sucker. It will create the elevation file for you, the splat type bmp (used for defining vegetation for the terrain), and create a CBM map for you also.
Then in the terrain editor you can go create a new terrain and save it. In the directory it creates (the terrain name located unser ah3terr directory) in the texsrc directory copy over the bmp for your terrain (for instance for my egypt terrain the file would be called egypt.bmp) with the cbm map artik's program created.
Then open up the terrain and import the "signed height map" with the raw file that artik's program created and import the Splat map with the bmp file his program created. Then basically you have an historical terrain minus all the bases, strats, spawn points, etc.