If you’ve watched the early footage of the Iraq war on any major 24 hour news network like CNN, then you’ve most likely seen footage of the Predator drone in action. The Predator drone is the U.S. Air Force’s poster child for their UAV program (unmanned aerial vehicle). And over the past five years, it has proven to be reliable and cost effective vehicle for reconnaissance and combat missions, all while keeping their pilots safe and out of harms way. In fact the UAV program is so popular; Lt. Gen. Norman Seip has gone on record saying “Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft," the general said. "I think that makes a very pointed statement about our commitment to the future of [unmanned aircraft] and what it brings to the fight in meeting the requirements of combatant commanders."

So where does this leave video gamers? Who better to pilot these unmanned vehicles of the future than video gamers. We already put in countless hours of “virtual combat training” everytime we play an online first-person-shooter of flight simulator. Gamers are exceptionally smart amnd cunning when it comes to virtual war, and I’m not just talking about the advantage they posses in terms of had-eye cordination. In online shooters like Gears of War 2 or Call of Duty, gamers utilize teamwork, communication, plus a variety of combat manuevers like flanking to intercept and engage the enemy. And these same skills utilized in everyday video games, will be the foundation for those required for remote UAV combat missions.

Thinking ahead and preparing for gamer recruitments, the military has already designed weapon systems that mimc existing gaming platforms. Author P.W. Singer of the book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century said in an interview with NPR:

“The military figured out that there were two advantages [to designing remote weapons systems as if they were videogames]. For example, the hand-held controllers that most of the ground robotics systems use, they're modeled after the Xbox or the Playstation. And the reason was two-fold. One, they figured out, "okay, these game companies have spent millions of dollars designing systems that are perfectly suited for where your fingers should go, and the like, and if they did all the research, why don't we piggyback on that?"

“The second is they figured out, "hold it, the videogame companies have already trained up our forces for us. We're getting kids coming in who have spent the last several years working with these videogame controllers, why not free-ride off that as well?"

“One of the people we interviewed [for the book] was a nineteen-year-old high school drop-out. He's an Army specialist. He's actually, by some consideration, the best drone pilot in the entire force and it's in part because of videogames.”

“This is not a story that people in the Air Force like to hear. It's spooking out a lot of people. For example, F-15 pilots who spent years and years training, going to college, they're officers, and when they hear..."hold it, this nineteen-year-old video gamer is not just better at these systems than me, but is actually out there doing more fighting than me, what's going on here?"