A guy went from high school dropout to drone pilot instructor in the Army — not a position most 19-year-old enlisted hold, by the way — thanks in part to his video game skills.
Sigh.
The soldier in question was a high school dropout who joined the military to make his father proud (graduating from high school, however, does not do that). But his failing grades in school made his superiors skeptical of his qualifications to be a helicopter mechanic, his first choice. So they asked if he wanted to be a drone pilot.
Surprise, surprise, this doesn’t sit too well with bona-fide academy flyboys. Says P.W. Singer, a former defense policy adviser to the Obama campaign, and the author of “Wired for War,”
“You tell that story to someone in the Air Force, like an F-15 pilot, and they go, ‘I do not like where this is headed. You know, I’ve got a college education. The military spent $5 million training me up. And you’re telling me that this kid, this nineteen-year-old-and — oh, by the way, he’s in the Army — is doing more than I am?’ And that’s the reality of it.”
In all seriousness, it’s great that the kid is joining the military. More power to him if he really wants to do so. He just better remember that the Konami Code doesn’t work in real life.