The best drone pilots aren’t gamers: they’re off-road motorcyclists

As they say marines Americans, the best attack drone pilots may be off-road motorcyclists, not video game players.

Marines deployed to the U.S. West Coast are discovering that some of the best drone operators are not necessarily video game players. Instead, they are more likely to be motocrossers or people accustomed to driving boatsan official told .

Those responsible for the course at the 1st Marine Division’s drone school at Camp Pendleton, California, initially thought that their young military personnel would generation Zwho began going through this new training last fall, would have a natural advantagetaking into account that they grew up in a world saturated with technology and exposed to video games.

But while video game experience can make learning drone simulators easier, instructors concluded that flying drones with explosive payloads, even light ones, is something that appears more naturally in marines who grew up honing their outdoor skillsriding off-road motorcycles, watercraft or boats, explained the major Mike Olivarezwho oversees the division’s drone pilot course.

At the heart of the difficulty are the small commands in the control system manual, which determine the direction, speed and altitude of the drone and require an unusually delicate touch to master.

“It feels heavier when you try to apply that binary,” said Olivarez, who compares dexterity required to control armed drones to that required for operating the accelerator of a motorcycle.

This binary is influenced by the weight of the explosive chargewhich only weighs about 2.3 kilograms, but can have a significant impact on the flight.

Soldiers from Ukrainian drone units and U.S. Army combat brigades noted that the video game playersfamiliar with technology and comfortable with screens and controls, often have skills that allow them stand out as drone pilots, but these conclusions are punctual, non-deterministic.

The Army is still trying to figure out what kind of soldier makes the best drone pilot. And the Marines too.

“If they have nothing in their past personal experience that allows them to relate to it, continue to have difficulties“, said Olivarez. “If you have any connection to mechanics and operation in an outdoor environmentI would say that prepares someone to succeed better than video games.”

Over the six editions of the Marine Corps course, instructors began to notice that more than 20% of trainees were failing due to problems with control sensitivity.

The problem became particularly evident when students passed the simulator controls, weightless, for real systemswhere drones carry payloads that may not be heavy but still require a type of different handling.

To fill this gap, Olivarez and his team asked the simulator manufacturer to better reproduce the weight of a warhead on a drone. Instructors also began having students train with a smaller, five-inch drone, with some resistance on controls, to ease the transition to the Corps’ Neros Archer drone and reduce the dropout rate to about 15 percent.

Drones are asserting themselves as a integral part of modern warfareas Russia’s war against Ukraine demonstrated — and the Marines, like the other branches of the United States military, are in a race to become prepare for this growing threat.

Some Marines now have the double qualification of drone operators and payload specialists, meaning they can safely prepare an explosive payload — a change introduced by course leaders to advance more military personnel through the training process, Olivarez said.

In addition to dexterity, Olivarez said that the ideal marine for the course is someone with natural curiosity for technology and the ability to think creatively about how to use it.

“Looking for someone with the ability to adapt and very quickly understand unmanned aerial systems. Because the technology we are receiving will force us to have increasingly technological competence,” said Olivarez.