Ukrainian drone pilot training program turned into video game so anyone can "feel the rush" of modern warfare

London — Gamers around the world can now buy and play at home a pared-down version of a first-person drone training program developed and used by the Ukrainian armed forces. The game's evolution — from battlefield training tool to home entertainment — is a notable first, and it is tied directly to Ukraine's ongoing efforts to repel Russia's four-year, full-scale invasion.

"Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator" (UFDS) is available to buy online for about $30. It features the same ultra-realistic physics and piloting controls that have helped teach Ukrainian drone pilots to seek out and destroy Russian tanks, missile launchers and troops. The Full Simulator is available, for free, to all members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to use.   

Vlad Plaksin, CEO of the Drone Fight Club Academy, a facility that trains Ukrainian military drone pilots, was one of the lead developers and driving forces behind UFDS. The academy has trained more than 5,000 Ukrainian military drone pilots since it was established early in the war, and it collaborated last year with the U.S. Air Force for a training session at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Plaksin told CBS News one objective in turning the military program into a video game is to train young Ukrainians to fly drones, to "give them a possibility not to go to the trench with rifles."

Interest in anything drone-related among young Ukrainians has soared during the war, thanks largely to the country's military drone pilots, whom Plaksin said had achieved heroic status.

"Most young people want to fly, want to hit [Russian targets], want to grow up in this new world of robotics," he told CBS News.

The game's creators call it a "public adaptation of a leading ultra-realistic FPV [first person view] drone trainer, built on lessons from the Ukrainian front line," offering players an opportunity to "learn to fly like a front-line pilot, take on real-world mission scenarios, and feel the rush of modern FPV warfare."

In hyperrealistic detail, it includes different types of drones to pilot on combat missions against Russian targets, with weather conditions and other variables that aim to provide an experience realistic enough for anyone to learn and practice the basics of drone warfare. 

There are many games that offer similar FPV warfare experiences, including driving tanks, piloting fighter jets, and commanding submarines. But UFDS is the first to be developed directly from military software.

Ethical concerns?

While many games have likely been used by armed forces around the world as teaching tools, they have been developed as games first. UFDS flips that model around, bringing a real-world military training tool to screens in people's homes. 

Plaksin acknowledged ethical concerns around creating a game that allows young people to pretend they're piloting deadly drones in such a realistic way, calling it "a very sensitive question," but noting that the game is not unique in this regard.

"There are many other simulators which do the same, and we are not opening something new," he said.

UFDS is not the first video game to be used as a pseudo recruitment tool by a military, either. 

The "America's Army" series, launched in 2002 and developed by the U.S. Army, is widely seen as the first overt use of video games to drive recruitment by a national military. While the series was nowhere near as realistic as UFDS, it served a similar purpose.

Could Russia take advantage?

Plaksin says the Ukrainian game, at its core, is a tool for people to gain "a basic knowledge for the drones, but also at the same time, we try to do it maximum safety, for not sharing the sensitive information."

To avoid revealing details that Russia's military could potentially use to train its own pilots, there are significant differences between the publicly available version of UFDS and the version used at the Drone Fight Club Academy to train Ukrainian military operators.

Those differences are "mostly about tactics," Plaksin told CBS News. "It gives you everything that you need, but it will not give you the tactics. I think it's the main difference between the versions."

He said some of that just involves paring down what, for gamers, might be the more tedious parts of drone warfare. Gamers may not want to spend 30 minutes flying their virtual drone to reach an objective, for instance. So the gameplay is deliberately made more arcade-style, while maintaining highly realistic controls and user experience.

This means that there is "less understanding of missions, less understanding of how to fly for a huge distance" which is a vital part of training drone pilots. 

"When you fly on the [real] drones, you see the area and you need to read the map and compare it with what you see," Plaksin said. "In missions, it's very important. In arcade games, it's not important, and we don't put it inside because it will not be interesting for the players."

UFDS is still a very niche game, with only around 50 people playing online daily. Such detailed military simulation games often garner small but loyal followings, and rarely break into the wider gaming community. 

But Plaksin is trying to change that, and broaden appeal. He's helping to organize a championship he hopes will "maximise the level of people playing the game" and encourage competition between players.