Latest news with #GrahamFlanagan
Business Insider
08-08-2025
- Business Insider
US Army captain says top drone pilots are the ones who play video games when they get off on Fridays
At a recent exercise, a US Army captain told Business Insider's Graham Flanagan that gamers make top drone pilots. The officer said soldiers experienced with video games were able to fly drones faster and more accurately. Ukrainian drone units have also sought out gamers, saying they have the skill sets for flying drones. Soldiers who regularly play video games are transferring those skills to flying drones, making them top pilots, a US Army captain told Business Insider. At an exercise in southern Germany, BI saw how soldiers are designing, building, and flying cheap quadcopter drones, as well as working out problems in the field as the Army adapts to the challenges of drone warfare. At the Drone Innovation Cell in Vilseck near the Hohenfels Training Area, Capt. Ronan Sefton, an intelligence officer in the Army's 2nd Calvary Regiment, explained to Business Insider's Graham Flanagan that there is a strong connection between gaming and the skills needed to fly a drone well. "The top pilots," the officer said, "the people who are learning the fastest, able to fly the most controlled, fly the fastest, and very accurately," are gamers. "Those are the soldiers who, when they get off on Fridays, then go and play video games." Playing video games has applications when piloting uncrewed aerial vehicles, though it's not exactly a one-for-one. Transferable skills include the kind of hand-eye coordination that a gamer would have from playing with a controller and looking at a screen, which isn't unlike flying a drone via a monitor or operating a first-person-view drone. The latter requires pilots to wear goggles similar to many of the commercially available virtual reality/augmented reality headsets. These present the world from the perspective of the camera on the drone. Other skills include the ability to multitask, recognize patterns, maintain situational awareness, and comfortably interact with digital interfaces. Some studies have also shown that gamers have quicker reaction times and do well making decisions under pressure, potentially critical in high-stakes drone warfare. US military personnel have been training to pilot small quadcopter drones in the field and through simulator programs, like one on display at a recent US Special Operations Forces exercise that simulated flying a drone through buildings and around a city. It can be more difficult than it appears, even with gaming skills. Gamers still rise to the top, though. In Russia's war against Ukraine, Ukraine's military has seen the value of having pilots who play video games, even actively recruiting for them to join the ranks of drone units. Some operators in the war have attributed their successes flying drones for reconnaissance and strike missions to their gaming skills. There's even a video game called "Death From Above" that puts players in the position of a Ukrainian FPV operator, prompting them to fly through the battlefield, target enemies, and drop bombs on vehicles. But while the skills overlap, drone warfare isn't a game. It's an intense, high-stakes fight with real consequences. In the Ukraine war, a driver for modern drone warfare developments with small, cheap platforms, operators are priority targets for conventional threats such as artillery and newer ones, like other drone pilots. "People think flying a military drone is like playing 'Call of Duty,' until they realize there's no restart option," an operator from Ukraine's special drone Typhoon unit told Business Insider earlier this year.
Business Insider
07-08-2025
- Business Insider
Behind the US Army's drone push is broken gear, bad signals, and a lot of lessons that still need to be learned
A lieutenant needed a drone up in the air to get a read on the enemy forces. Responding, a drone operator slipped on his headset, but the video feed was out. It was a no-go for recon. The quadcopter drone had gotten snagged on a branch during maneuver, and the soldier's frustrated effort to get it loose apparently damaged the cord. With the drone down, the only option was for soldiers to physically move into position for a visual. The combat action wasn't real, but the challenges experienced were. The drone wars are here, and there's a lot to learn. As the US Army drone pilot told Business Insider's Graham Flanagan during the recent exercise in southern Germany, issues arise because "we're still so new to having drones with us." Drone warfare has dominated the war in Ukraine, and now, the Army is increasingly recognizing it as a key element of future warfare. It is a capability that can't be ignored; however, the service has a lot of catching up to do. During the exercise at the Hohenfels Training Area, about 400 miles from the western border of Ukraine, where drones are constantly buzzing about the battlefield, Business Insider got an up-close look at soldiers with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment testing their own drones as part of a larger mission to capture an area of defended trenches. The drones themselves cost just about $500 and are assembled by drone pilots in the regiment at the Drone Innovation Cell in Vilseck. "All of them were completely designed, built, and flown by 2CR soldiers," Capt. Ronan Sefton, an intelligence officer with 2CR, told Business Insider. Off-the-shelf Chinese-made drones like the Russians and Ukrainians have used in battle aren't an option, so for the Army, that means starting from scratch. At the innovation cell, soldiers donned headsets lighter than the ones commonly used for virtual reality or video games and tested the drones. Developing the systems on the spot, the soldiers switched out parts on quadcopters, designed and 3D printed components, and demonstrated how pilots can attach and drop payloads. The Army recently dropped a live grenade from a drone for the first time, taking a tactic seen extensively in Ukraine and applying it. Problems began to arise when it was time to take them onto the "battlefield." The first occurred when Pfc. Jaazaniah Aguigui attached his quadcopter to the outside of his rucksack. "What I'm concerned about is all this," said Sgt. Maj. Paul Hamako, pointing to the propellers on the drone, "is going to get, you know, you're going to get in the woodline, and it's going to get hung up on stuff." He called it. When Aguigui was following his fellow soldiers through the forest of the training area later, that exact scenario occurred: his drone was caught in the thick vines of a shrub, and he had to quickly rip the vine apart to keep moving. The hiccup, he suspected, is what led to one of the drone's cables malfunctioning later when he needed it to survey the area. "I wasn't even paying attention to the tree, kind of got tunnel vision and wanted to just follow the dude in front of me and ended up getting caught," he told Business Insider. He explained that transporting the drone on the outside of the rucksack was something he hoped would work, but the drone being exposed to the environment turned out to be a problem. What might be fine for an open field gets complicated in the woods. Army drone operators encountered several other problems with their drones during the exercise. One encountered range trouble and a loss of GPS. Another pilot tossed on a headset for a first-person-view drone but ran into problems with a bad signal connection on the first attempt to scout the area, with a ridgeline causing trouble. Tinkering with a drone in the field, Pfc. Caleb Johns realized he didn't have enough screws on hand for the work. "So either way, we can't fly anymore," he said. They went through multiple drones trying to support the reconnaissance operations but ran into a string of issues before they could get a pair up to complete the mission. These connectivity and hardware issues discovered during testing of the drones at the exercise were important feedback, though, helping prepare the Army for a kind of warfare that has exploded onto the scene. "We have to work through some problems in the field because we're innovating at a speed that we kind of haven't seen before in the past," Hamako explained of the ongoing work, adding that "it's a really great thing that we're doing right now, and that's a good problem to have." And it wasn't all struggles. Army pilots executed recon tasks and harassed hostile forces using drones. But broadly, the US military has a lot to learn about using small, cheap uncrewed aerial systems like those that have become a defining element of war in Ukraine. There are growing pains in learning drone warfare, in learning from the fighting in Ukraine, where both sides have ramped up their use of all types of drones and uncrewed vehicles for intelligence and conducting strike missions. The Army appears to be behind the curve, but it's embracing the use of these drones in a big way as part of its massive transformation initiative unveiled earlier this year, which heavily focuses on drones with plans to give every division 1,000 of them and counter-UAS systems within the next two years. The transformation is shaping up to be one of the Army's largest overhauls since the Cold War's end and is estimated to cost about $36 billion over the next five years. Army officials have said it is designed to increase lethality and readiness in the service and is focused on the needs of individual warfighters. Across the Army, soldiers are learning how to operate drones through trial and error in the field. In the Indo-Pacific, for example, soldiers have been learning how weather and temperature impact flight duration and takeoff. The military is also adapting to the dynamics of the drone market, long dominated by Chinese companies, and pushing US defense companies to produce more drones and essential components.
Business Insider
07-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
How the US military is training a drone army 400 miles from Ukraine
The US Army announced it will invest $36 billion over the next five years to modernize its force, with a heavy emphasis on drone technology. Graham Flanagan, Business Insider's chief video correspondent, went inside a combat training exercise with the Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment in southern Germany, where soldiers are learning to assemble, operate, and fly drones used for both reconnaissance and attack capabilities. The 2CR drone pilots train at the Drone Innovation Cell in Vilseck, Germany, before heading to a training area in the Bavarian countryside to deploy the technology in a training event known as STX Lanes, which stands for "situational training exercise."
Business Insider
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
US Marine reveals untold boot camp stories
Business Insider's chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan and senior videographer and editor Aj Caldwell take you behind the scenes of the latest "Boot Camp" story, the Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. They are joined by Lance Cpl. Brandon Weaver, one of the main characters featured in the piece. Weaver discusses his firsthand experience during the training as well as some of the untold stories not shown in the film.
Business Insider
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
How I survived 14 days in the grueling Army Mountain School
Business Insider's chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan and senior producer Jake Gabbard take you behind the scenes of the latest "Boot Camp" story: covering the US Army Mountain Warfare School in the rugged mountains of Vermont. From battling brutal weather conditions to capturing the intense, high-stakes training soldiers endure, Graham and Jake break down what it took to produce one of the series' most challenging episodes. They dive into the storytelling process, talking about choosing compelling characters and navigating the harsh terrain — all while bringing the unique world of military mountaineering to life on-screen.
