Ukrainian troops taught the British Army what it takes to get soldiers up to speed on drone flying. Sixty hours is typically the minimum requirement for pilot competence, a senior British officer said.
Lt. Col. Ben Irwin-Clark, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, an elite British Army infantry regiment, told Business Insider that the Ukrainians said a decent pilot needs at least 30 hours on a simulator and 30 hours of actual flying in the field.
At about 60 hours, “they are pretty competent at being able to fly different types of drones,” he said. After that, improvement comes with repetition and exposure to more systems. “It’s an upward curve in terms of how good they can get,” he said. It takes practice.
The battalion received those lessons while it was helping train Ukrainian troops for their fight against Russia’s invasion. The unit was deployed in support of Operation Interflex, the UK-led effort with 13 other countries to train Ukrainian soldiers in Western and NATO-style fighting.
As Western forces train Ukrainian troops, Ukrainian soldiers with front-line experience have also been sharing lessons with their international partners, particularly in areas where NATO militaries have limited recent combat exposure, like small drone operations.
The US Army has also been learning from Ukraine about the value of simulators in drone training. Its Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course at Fort Rucker, Alabama — designed to help the service catch up on drone warfare — uses simulated flight training before soldiers progress to live drones, Maj. Wolf Amacker, chief of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Tactics Branch at the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence, told Business Insider.
Western militaries have much deeper institutional expertise across many forms of warfare, but they haven’t fought a war quite like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a large-scale, tech- and drone-saturated industrial conflict. They have fought heavy artillery battles and engaged in trench warfare, but it’s been decades. Ukrainian troops coming through Western training often have more recent experience.
On small drones in particular, Ukraine has tremendous experience, far more than its partners. Drones have been used more in this war than in any other previous conflict, and Western partners are keen to learn from it.
Irwin-Clark said Ukraine’s fight was what pushed his battalion to go all-in on drones, calling them part of “the future of warfare.”
Seventy-eight of the battalion’s 300 members are now pilots or instructors. The unit has built a “drone hub” where soldiers can make and repair drones and train on them. Irwin-Clark described it as the first of its kind in the British Army, saying, “No other unit in the British Army has one of these yet.”
He added that when it came to learning drone warfare, “I was surprised by how quickly people picked it up.”
The battalion has also made other changes based on Ukrainian advice, including adding anti-drone nets to training and using 3D printing to quickly and cheaply produce drone parts.
Other Western militaries are seeking similar guidance. Poland and Norway have looked to Ukraine for help training operators, while Ukrainian specialists have traveled to Denmark to participate in counter-drone exercises.
Ukrainian drone schools training operators for the war have previously told Business Insider that their instruction draws almost entirely on Ukrainian battlefield experience, not lessons from Western partners, reflecting how far ahead the country is of its allies in practical drone warfare knowledge.
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