An elite British Army unit is using video games to teach soldiers how to fly drones before they take to the skies for real.
Soldiers in the 1st Battalion of the UK’s Irish Guards use several publicly available simulators “favored by tactical and hobbyist pilots the world over,” Capt. Pickett RM, a company second-in-command in the battalion, told Business Insider.
One simulator for beginners includes courses that run along race tracks and through mountains and other environments. Pickett said the battalion could not name the game for licensing and other reasons.
The simulated flights build soldiers’ “hand-eye coordination, reaction times, understanding of how the system handles,” he said, describing it as being “like driving a car in 3D.”
It’s an important initial step, he said, because “flying FPV drones is exceptionally hard to do and requires a significant time flying.” Pickett said that “simulation is the most effective way of achieving this.”
A Royal Marine working with the Irish Guards on the battalion’s drone warfare plans told Business Insider that the simulator is “a key part in learning to fly, and we’ve really taken that from our Ukrainian allies in-house to train people effectively in drones and protect our time and resources.”
“We’ve got the guys coming in, and they’re playing video games,” they said, but they’re “learning a valuable tactical skill that they can use later down the line.”
Starting with the simulated drones reduces the number of real aircraft that inexperienced pilots destroy during training, saving equipment, money, and time.
The Irish Guards do a minimum of 30 hours on the simulator, followed by a minimum of 30 hours of actual flying on the field.
The US Army takes a similar approach in its Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Alabama, where soldiers spend 20 to 30 hours on simulators before beginning live flight.
Maj. Wolf Amacker, who leads the US Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Tactics Branch at the Aviation Center of Excellence, said FPV drones may be cheap compared with other weapons, but commanders still do not want a beginner to “absolutely smash it and wreck it and lose $2,000.”
Instead, he said, the Army can use “a $20 video game” to get someone ready to safely and effectively fly the real aircraft.
The Irish Guards also built a drone obstacle course for soldiers to practice their live flight.
The battalion has created a first-of-its-kind within the British Army “drone hub” where soldiers can do their simulation training, repair damaged drones, and use 3D printers to make drone parts. It is now developing a mobile drone hub that can work in the field.
The 30 hours of simulation followed by 30 hours of live flight was something the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards adopted based on advice from Ukrainian soldiers it helped train.
Lt. Col. Ben Irwin-Clark, the battalion’s commanding officer, previously told Business Insider that soldiers are “pretty competent at being able to fly different types of drones” by the end of the 60 hours.
The battalion’s focus on drones grew out of its work with Ukrainian troops through Operation Interflex, the UK-led mission to train Ukrainian soldiers.
Irwin-Clark said the Ukrainians were, in some cases, “coming straight to us from the front line, passing on the benefit of their knowledge.”
Ukraine has shown that drones are part of the “future of warfare,” he said, making their battlefield use something soldiers “need to be experts at.”
The simulators, akin to video games that some troops came up playing, are a first step toward getting there.
Pickett said that it’s “hard to say” if prior video game experience is helpful for building drone operator skills. “Some have found it helpful,” he said, but it’s “not common to all.”
“It’s a hard skill set with a variety of factors that feed into an individual’s ability to pilot an FPV,” he said, adding that he “can’t imagine it hurts.”
Unlike games, warfare carries with it real life-and-death consequences. An operator from Ukraine’s special drone Typhoon unit previously told Business Insider that “people think flying a military drone is like playing ‘Call of Duty,’ until they realize there’s no restart option.”
A simulator cannot reproduce the danger and psychological pressure of flying drones in combat. But militaries increasingly see gaming technology as an effective way to teach the fundamental skills before soldiers handle real aircraft.
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