RAF should employ teenage VIDEO GAMERS to blast ISIS with Reaper drones, top commander says
TEENAGE video game players need to be recruited by the RAF to carry out deadly drone strikes in Syria, according to a British commander who oversaw the use of Reaper unmanned aircraft in the region.
"18-19-year-olds straight out of the Playstation bedroom" should be allowed to operate the weapons and blast ISIS, said Air Marshal Greg Bagwell - a former RAF deputy commander of operations.
Bagwell said: "We need to test harder whether we can take a young 18 or 19-year-old out of their PlayStation bedroom and put them into a Reaper cabin and say: ‘Right, you have never flown an aircraft before [but] that does not matter, you can operate this’."
He hinted that skills acquired by playing video games might equip teens to operate the expensive weaponry.
He added: "In order to be a very good Reaper operator you need that three-dimensional view of what is going on around you, even though you are 3,000 miles away.
"You are playing three-dimensional chess in your mind, so you understand how the various pieces fit together in terms of prosecuting a target."
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More than a third of coalition strikes against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria have been carried out by Reaper drones.
The former drone strike commander claimed the relentless demand to deploy the drones - as well as the psychological pressure on drone operators in the UK - needed to be considered, before calling for a rethink of the law governing the weapon's use.
Bagwell, who oversaw controversial strikes in Syria, urged that the law should be changed to give drone operators greater confidence that they are acting legally.
The marshal also noted that advances in technology would lead to the greater use of of the remote autonomously controlled weaponry and that the British military should be prepared for the future of warfare.
General Sir Richard Barrons, who was the joint forces commander until his retirement in April, echoed Bagwell's call to revisit law so that drone operators are given greater assurance of the legality of their actions.
He said: "We need to set ourselves up for the future where a combination of robotics, autonomous systems and artificial systems will create capabilities that our enemies have before we do - where machine kill on the basis of algorithm without a human in the room.
"That is not science fiction and it will not be very long before western armed forces are acquiring capability like that, and the will need to be absolutely clear what rules we have and then they apply.
The General also feared that "we have not thought through the application of current technology in the setting... where you cannot necessarily have such a high level of control of the targeting process, allowing rigour and advice at every stage.
"You cannot apply that in a more cyclical, dynamic conflict. It will not work."
Both men were giving evidence to an all-party committee inquiring into the law governing the use of drones, especially in joint UK and US operations.
The committee launched its inquiry after David Cameron announced that UK drones killed two ISIS-supporting Britons, Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin, as they drove through Syria in August 2015.
The controversial operation to take out the terror supporters was overseen by Bagwell, who insisted the strikes were legal.
Commenting on the pressure felt by British drone operators, the now retired commander said: "The problem we have had is that in seven years of constant operations we have not been allowed to have a break point, to step back and take stock without having to keep pushing crews."
He said operators were required to carry out massively stressful tasks during the day and are then expected to return to a family home in the UK.
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