Royal Air Force Now Hiring Gamers

[Zer_]

Yeh lets give people with only 30 hours basic training control of a remote aircraft, sounds fine. A remote aircraft with bombs and missiles.. No.. Just no...

I don't think you quite understand what the RAF is trying to do. Being a hardcore gamer you develop some interesting neural pathways in your brain that make it easier for you to do similar, yet different tasks.

I play flight sims on occasion. In fact I played Combat Flight Sim pretty often back in the day. I've also logged a few days of flight time in X-Plane. Last summer I had the privilege of flying a small aircraft. Granted an experienced pilot actually took off and landed the plane but I was surprised at how intuitive and easy it was for me to adapt to the flight controls.

No, the RAF isn't going to hire a bunch of gun-ho gamers, they are simply allowing gamers to take their test/training and they'll pick the best of the bunch. It may seem odd, but really within the flight sim community I'd say there are quite a few players out there who'd make fantastic pilots with only a few days of training.

 

[spyrewolf]

just a matter of time really, lets hope those team kill bastard aren't hired. yeah and it's gonna in such bad taste to here "BOOM HEAD SHOT" screaming out of airforce bases :/

young video gamers bad idea, mature adult gamers much better idea.

however i do see this as in bad taste, although remote drones usually stay away from the action, using kids for murder missions is still wrong in my eyes, it can mess you up knowing that your responsible for killing people (enemy or innocent) what happens if you fly out of control and end up in a daycare center, i'm sure that will stick with you for a long time)
WAR is not a game and should not be treated like a game.

 

[rossatdi]

Plus we already use 360 controllers to pilot our UAVs. Does make sense.

Yep. So much for "War is not a video game."

War is a videogame. But you only get one life, no continues and HP starts at 10%. Cover fire works better but typical strafing doesn't. You can't put the pin back in grenades but you can carry more than two weapons. Knives don't kill in one hit but then you don't have to use them that often. Typically enemy AI is quite good at setting up ambushes but tends to go to hell in a fire fight.

Also cutscenes are never skippable.

 

[Sporky111]

As skeptical as I am about sending an untrained civilian to fly heavily armed planes by remote, the countless hours of experience a hardcore gamer has could be the perfect qualification. Send them to boot camp so they think like a soldier and not like a gamer, I think would be the best solution.

 

[The Shade]

*sigh* Would I be able to operate it? Probably. (I'm not half bad with a Banshee, y'know.)

Would I feel ashamed and lie awake at night? Definitely.

No amount of "You get paid to play video games" could comfort me that I was capable of doing something like that.