Could video games breed a generation of fighter pilots?

Could video games breed a generation of fighter pilots?

Becoming a fighter pilot could be a whole lot easier for this and the next generation of aspiring aces and it could all be down to the endless notifications and multiscreen lifestyles adopted worldwide.

When flying a plane, you’d need more than the ability to handle a smartphone, but the skills you develop using modern technology could be making you a prime candidate for a seat in a fighter jet.

Of course, flying a jet isn’t easy.

‘A World War II pilot would look at all the things going on in the cockpit today and his first reaction would be, “You guys have too many things going on here at once.” You know, it is sensory overload,’ Cesar Rodriguez, a United States Air Force officer and pilot from 1981 to 2006, told The Atlantic. With his three air-to-air combat victories, Rodriguez is the closest thing to an air ace the US has had since the Vietnam War. ‘When you put one of those old pilots in a modern simulator, he can fly the airplane. The airplane is as easy to fly today as it was back then, maybe actually easier, because now it has aerodynamic features that make it more forgiving from the standpoint of taking off and landing. But they will very quickly say, “I can’t keep up with all the sensors that are buzzing into my brain right now.” And every sensor that talks to you has a different frequency, a different tone, a different format, and some of them you are only picking up audio, others it’s a visual, some a combination of the two.’

Lt Col Marc Dauteuil, commander of the US Air Force 8th Flying Training Squadron at Vance Air Force Base, explains pilots must be able to see the world ‘geometrically and spatially’ as well as seeing the analytical aspect. He told Enid News & Eagle, ‘fighter pilots must be able to quickly wade through a mountain of information.’

The Atlantic article explains everything a fighter pilot has to handle on top of keeping a jet plane in the air. ‘You cope with constant, multiple streams of data, everything from basic flight information—airspeed, altitude, attitude, fuel levels—to incoming radar images displayed on small glowing green screens stacked in rows before you and to both sides. In your helmet are three or four radio links, with AWACS, with the ground, with your wingman, and with your flight leader. It is a little bit like trying to navigate at high speed with four or five different people talking to you at once, each with a slightly different set of directions.’ Miss something and the consequences can be catastrophic.

Rodriguez tells the story of a dogfight with two Iraqi pilots. One was dispatched via missile, the other by mistake. The Iraqi pilot attempted an escape manoeuvre which would quickly reverse his direction in the air: ‘flying parallel to the ground, he flipped his aircraft upside down and then attempted to fly a half circle, diving down, pulling up, and levelling off to head in the opposite direction. It was the right escape manoeuvre for an altitude of at least 5,000 feet, but the pilot, in his alarm and haste, neglected to compute one vital bit of data: he was only 600 feet up. He flew his jet straight into the desert floor.’

The Lockheed U-2 spyplane is a stalwart of the United States Air Force, in action since the cold war. In the Soviet flyover days, U-2 pilots would head out to a target, snap pictures, and fly back. Simple, except for the flying the plane part. Today, in situations like in Afghanistan and Libya, pilots must quickly react to changes on the battlefield, acting as a mobile relay station for communications and an eye in the sky for troops fighting on difficult terrain. They’re also in constant contact with the soldiers on the ground, while operating a radio, inputting navigational data, adjusting sensors, and flying an aeroplane.

The connection between pilot and plane is the helmet. Built around a custom-fitted insert in the shape of the pilot’s head, the helmet combines noise-cancelling headphones, night vision, a forehead-mounted computer, and projector displaying live video on its clear visor. This helmet fits snugly—and heavily—on the pilot’s head, connecting them to the jet via a ‘Kevlar-sheathed bundle of cords cascading down the side of the shell.’ The pilot becomes one with the plane—and this is not an exaggeration. The pilot can see through the base and walls of the aircraft, thanks to the cameras mounted outside in the Distributed Aperture System, which provides a 360-degree view of the plane’s surroundings, stitching together feeds from the corresponding external cameras based on where the pilot’s looking. The System also labels objects in their field of view with distance, bearing, speed, and altitude. All the pilot has to do is look at something to lock on, flip a switch to zoom in and then bombs away. Even when the pilot isn’t looking, the plane’s sensors are constantly looking for threats and keeping track of nearby wingmen, projecting relevant information onto the helmet’s visor, according to Wired. Phew!

So, pilots are reading while driving, at speeds inconceivable by people who’ve only ever glanced at a text message while hurtling along the M1 (note to all: don’t.) Successfully navigating an aircraft through the air while processing multiple lines of information simultaneously requires intense focus, the likes of which ordinary people would struggle to achieve.

Or would they?

Gaming—especially online multiplayer—might be having profound effects on the way a generation uses their brains. A player pays attention to the main screen, making their way across terrain and dealing with all obstacles or enemy in their way; at the same time, they’re watching the map in the corner of the screen, keeping track of their teammates and the location of their objectives; they’re listening to the gameplay sound effects, the running commentary of their team and everything going on around them in real life; they’re scanning on-screen notifications and the ping-ing of all other devices in reach. They’re ‘quickly wading through a mountain of information’ and ‘coping with constant, multiple streams of data’—like a fighter pilot, just from the comfort of a living room chair, rather than the hotseat of a multimillion dollar aircraft.

A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found the brains of fighter pilots are ‘wired’ differently after researchers in the UK used cognitive tests and MRI scans to show there are significant differences in the white matter connections between brain regions of fighter pilots compared to a group of healthy volunteers with no flying experience. Dr Masud Husain, professor at the Institute of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said they were interested in pilots ‘because they often have to perform at the limits of human cognitive capability and are an expert group making precision choices at high speed, often in the presence of conflicting clues.’

In one test, the pilots performed at the same speed but with greater accuracy, demonstrating superior cognitive control ‘indexed by accuracy and post-conflict adaptation, showing ‘increased sensitivity to irrelevant, distracting choices.’ Dr Husain and his colleagues said their findings show that when exercising cognitive control, human experts have an enhanced ability to tune into relevant and irrelevant signals, and this is accompanied by structural changes in certain parts of their brain: the white matter of their frontal and parietal lobes.

Perhaps fighter pilot brains really are wired differently, but there are two crucial factors missing from this study: the researchers said they didn’t know if the pilots were born with differently wired brains or if their brain wiring changed as they learned and gained experience; plus, this study was conducted in 2010, before the golden age of online console multiplayer gaming. The ‘healthy volunteers’ may have lacked flying experience, but they also may have lacked modern gaming experience, and while we had smartphone apps and notifications in 2010, they certainly weren’t as constant or intrusive as today.

A 2015 study found regularly playing action video games increases the amount of grey matter in a person’s brain—the part responsible for muscle control and sensory perception skills such as seeing and hearing; memory function; and emotion, speech and decision formation—as well as promoting better connectivity in the regions of the brains associated with these functions. Gamers showed greater ability to focus attention on a task, great language processing capability, empathy and compassion, on top of finer control over hand-and-eye movement. Another study found action video games strengthen a person’s ability to translate sensory information quickly into accurate decisions as players are ‘tutored in detecting a range of visual and acoustic evidence that supports increasingly speedy decisions with no loss of precision.’

New research is showing younger brains can process information faster than previous generations, and they can transition from task to task more easily—attributed to the barrage of stimuli each person faces. There are screens everywhere: in our living rooms, offices, lifts, receptions, waiting rooms, shops, and in our hands constantly. In a study at Boston College, people in a room with a TV and a computer switched their eyes back and forth every 14 seconds.

So, while flying an aeroplane still isn’t exactly easy,  given the modern digital lifestyle, it’s not outside the realms of possibility for anyone to perform better than they’d expect if strapped into a fighter jet simulator.