US Uses Video Games to Recruit Drone Pilots as Young as 12

Gamers as young as twelve years old have been targeted for recruitment as U.S. drone pilots, a new documentary reveals.

According to director of DRONE Tonje Hessen Schei, video games and virtual reality have been a U.S. Army recruiting tool for a while now, including the invention of their own game America's Army.

Gamers as young as twelve years old have been targeted for recruitment as U.S. drone pilots, a new documentary reveals.

According to director of DRONE Tonje Hessen Schei, video games and virtual reality have been a U.S. Army recruiting tool for a while now, including the invention of their own game, America's Army.

Speaking to Vice magazine, Hessen Schei explained, “You enter your user information before you begin playing the game. They use real sounds and try to create a realistic feeling of being in a battle. It was supposed to be a recruiting tool and it ended up being a very popular online video game played by around 9 million people worldwide.”

The Obama administration has been heavily criticized for its use of drone attacks, which are already used eight times more than under former President Bush. The current government is unable to confirm the amount of deaths, military or civilian, the unmanned aircraft have inflicted.

In the documentary, that hits cinemas this autumn, Hessen Schei travelled to Sweden where the U.S. military were actively recruiting “targeting people down to 12 years old.”

According to the Norwegian filmmaker, recruited pilots felt that the military exploited their passion for gaming, and were actually against the use of drones for the purpose of killing.

“The pilots we spoke to initially thought it would be super cool, as they felt it might be like a video game. They had a background in gaming. But they got very surprised, as being a drone pilot can be incredibly boring.”

She continued: “That’s something we’ve heard from a lot of people during this production. This technology is being used incorrectly and there are serious questions around war crimes when it comes to how the strikes are conducted.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy have begun to test a new fleet of “drone boat” that have unlimited artificial intelligence and do not require a human operator.

Through a video released on its YouTube channel, the Navy introduced the Autonomous Swarm boats, “the unmanned navy vessels (that) can overwhelm an adversary.”

“The U.S. Navy is unleashing a new era in advanced ship protection,” the narrator of the video says.