Military chiefs now need more and more pilots to join new British Army Apache squadrons.
They are looking for recruits as young as 17 to form an elite teenage Apache squadron whilst they are still at college or university so that there will always be plenty of skilled Apache pilots entering the British Army.
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7 January 2007
WAR GAMERS
Army to recruit Xbox kids as Apache pilots
Exclusive by Rupert Hamer, Defence Correspondent
A British Army Apache helicopter
They are looking for recruits as young as 17 to form an elite teenage Apache squadron whilst they are still at college or university so that there will always be plenty of skilled Apache pilots entering the British Army.
-----------------------------------------------------
7 January 2007
WAR GAMERS
Army to recruit Xbox kids as Apache pilots
Exclusive by Rupert Hamer, Defence Correspondent
A British Army Apache helicopter
ARMY chiefs are headhunting kids from the Xbox and PlayStation generation as future Apache helicopter pilots - because computer games give them many of the right skills.
The youngsters have been identified as having the best "hand-to-eye" abilities for the job from spending hours on games consoles.
Now senior officers are set to tour British schools looking for recruits as young as 17 to form an elite teenage Apache squadron.
They want to sign them up BEFORE they leave school - but will offer to pay for them to go to university later. The choppers are so complicated to fly that it takes years to master, so the earlier they catch future pilots the better.
The Apache has played a crucial role in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan over the last nine months.
Military chiefs now need more and more pilots to join new squadrons. A senior Army Air Corps source said: "There is no reason why someone has to have gone to university to fly an Apache.
"The skill in flying the aircraft is to absorb large amounts of information from different sources without becoming flustered. The new generation of computer-game playing youngsters glued to their PlayStations, Xboxes and Game Boys already have some of those skills."
Weighing 10 tons and flying as low as 200ft, the Apache's mission is to scour battlefields for enemy vehicles and then destroy them.
sundaymirror.co.uk
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