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Xbox Prepared 18-Year-Old Soldier to Fly Drones

by Lee Bains on February 10, 2009 at 07:02 AM



All that time spent gaming may not be time spent poorly after all, according to Joystiq's story of one young man.

Last Friday, while being interviewed by Democracy Now! about his new book, 'Wired for War,' author P.W. Singer related the story of one young man who has found success in the military, thanks to the hours he'd logged in front of computer monitors and TV screens.

According to Singer, the unidentified 18-year-old enlisted man was deemed unsuitable for his chosen job as a helicopter mechanic by the Army due to his academic failures in high school. Instead, the young man settled for the role of piloting drone planes, which are small, robotic planes, particularly useful in counter-insurgent attacks, that can be controlled from half a world away. Having been an avid player of Xbox games in civilian life, the young man found drone piloting to be second nature.

"He was naturally trained up," Singer explained. "And he turned out to be so good that they brought him back from Iraq and made him an instructor in the training academy, even though he's an enlisted man and ... 19." [From: Democracy Now! via Joystiq]

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Tags: army, drone, military, military tech, MilitaryTech, top, video games, VideoGames

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