Inside a bunker, a pilot operates a first-person-view drone, unable to see the aircraft directly. A navigator plots a grid and helps search a degraded video feed. Somewhere in the cluttered environment the drone navigates is the target the operator seeks. But finding it is only the first task. To destroy the target, the pilot must have the skill to place the drone within a few feet for five seconds.

The drone crashes. This is not a mission failure, however. It is a learning opportunity—because the pilot and navigator are at a training site. The target they sought was a twelve-inch designator, affixed to a room, a vehicle, a culvert, a tree, or any other object depending on the training iteration. Finding the target demonstrates an important capability. So does the hover. And after the crash, the team recovers the aircraft, diagnoses the problem, repairs or replaces what is needed, and flies again.

This is Killhouse. And the training it delivers holds lessons for the US Army as it seeks to develop the skills its formations will need on tomorrow’s battlefield.

We had the opportunity recently to visit the Killhouse training site and document the training delivered during the site’s six-day First-Person-View (FPV) Pro Course. Its sixteen students demonstrated simulator proficiency before beginning repeated live flights built around crew coordination, degraded video, cluttered terrain, payload effects, maintenance, and increasingly complex tactical tasks. The key lesson for the US Army is to protect advanced-course time for skills that require specialized facilities and instructors. Basic aircraft control should be learned before arrival.

The Army is already moving in that direction. In July 2026, Fort Rucker’s Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course (UALC) reported increasing kinetic engagements from five to twelve and announced a culminating exercise at a new drone training facility incorporating close-quarters battle training. The facility opened in April with an indoor drone flying course, classrooms, and labs. UALC leaders said they would use it to progress soldiers from basic flight skills toward lethality.

The new facility is the Army aviation branch’s effort to re-create the Killhouse training model using lessons from the course in Ukraine. But to do that requires first answering a fundamental question: What should advanced FPV training actually produce?

Advanced training should produce a crew that can employ the system when the video degrades, the terrain closes in, the aircraft carries mission-representative weight, and components begin to fail. The crew must still navigate, communicate, troubleshoot, and complete a tactical task. Sustained practice beyond that proficiency standard develops expertise.

Advanced Courses Mean Prerequisites

The first thing Killhouse got right was the entrance standard. Students were tested immediately on the Liftoff simulator and had to demonstrate stable hovering, controlled yaw without drift, and precision landings before moving to live aircraft. Instructors could then move directly to the harder skills that justify scarce range time and specialized cadre.

Students should establish simulator proficiency before entering advanced FPV courses. Units can build basic stick skills at home station with commercially available simulators, controllers, and a published performance standard. The advanced course can validate that baseline on arrival. Regardless of simulator choice, students must demonstrate controlled manual flight, commonly called acro mode, before beginning advanced training.

That division of labor creates a training pipeline the Army can sustain. Home stations develop basic pilots. Institutional and specialized courses develop tactical crews and instructors. Units then sustain those skills through repetition. Prerequisites keep advanced-course time focused on advanced tasks.

Train the Crew and the System

At Killhouse, students operated in pilot-navigator teams. Each team worked from a bunker-based ground control station while launch and recovery occurred outside. The navigator helped plot grids, coordinated launch and recovery, supported target search, and maintained the crew’s broader picture. The pilot concentrated on aircraft control and interpreting the video feed. That structure forced communication and division of labor from the beginning.

The target set reinforced the same logic. Dozens of small numbered placards were placed in rooms, vehicles, culverts, vegetation, and behind concrete or other obstructions that degraded the signal and complicated target acquisition. Students had to search, orient, associate the video with the terrain, and hold a stable hover near the target before receiving the next task. The standard required precise control as the crew’s view deteriorated, a skill that gives operators time to identify a target before committing to an engagement.

The course also treated sustainment as part of employment. Crashes were expected. Students managed batteries, tightened components, identified faults, and remained accountable for the condition of their aircraft. Engineers supported repairs while operators remained responsible for resolving faults. Students often ran to recover crashed drones and disconnect their batteries to prevent further damage. Recovery, repair, and after-action review returned the crew to another flight quickly.

FPV capability depends on the crew, controller, video link, batteries, antennas, navigation, launch and recovery procedures, spectrum management, repair, and tactical integration. As the Army builds out its drone training enterprise, that effort must reflect the reality that evaluating only whether an individual can fly leaves most of the overall system untested.

Normalize Degradation

Killhouse introduced signal degradation and visual clutter early in the course. Beginning on the second day, aircraft carried added weight that changed handling and endurance. Controlled training also exposed students to imperfect but serviceable equipment, forcing them to recognize the difference between a nuisance, a developing fault, and a condition that required repair.

That approach built a useful habit: Students continued to think while the aircraft became harder to fly. They learned to slow down, search deliberately, use terrain association, and preserve control as the video degraded. The final progression included dynamic targets and a tightly controlled terminal-effects block, connecting piloting to tactical employment.

The Army should not copy Ukrainian wartime risk tolerance or assume every Ukrainian practice belongs on an American range. Airspace, safety authorities, equipment, force structure, and mission profiles differ. However, Killhouse provides a benchmark for training standards and practices, and from there FPV training can be adapted to US requirements. Its prerequisites, crew training, demanding range design, and emphasis on sustainment can inform American courses without importing every wartime practice.

The Army’s Progress Needs a Common Standard

Army programs now address several parts of this requirement. In February 2026, the Maneuver Center of Excellence launched a pilot of the Robotic Autonomous Systems Leader Tactics Course to teach leaders how to integrate those systems into tactical planning. At Fort Indiantown Gap, the Unmanned Aircraft System Training and Innovation Facility began training instructors on the Neros Archer FPV system. The Joint Multinational Readiness Center’s Drone Validation Course trains opposing-force soldiers to employ FPV and other small drones in demanding terrain. These programs demonstrate progress toward different objectives and must be assessed against their respective training purposes.

As those programs expand, the Army needs a common understanding of what advanced FPV crews must be able to do. Otherwise, courses can carry the same label while training students to different standards. Killhouse demonstrates a training progression in which crews build on basic aircraft control to employ the system under representative constraints.

Training quality also affects acquisition decisions. In June 2026, priority transformation-in-contact units received hands-on training on multiple Group 2 medium-range reconnaissance drones before selecting systems through the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Marketplace. In August, that storefront became the air domain of the Department of Defense’s broader Drone Marketplace. The purchases involved reconnaissance platforms, but the same evaluation problem applies to FPV aircraft. User feedback is useful only when evaluators can distinguish a platform limitation from a training, communications, or employment problem. Evaluators must test systems under representative contested conditions to assess operational suitability.

From Course Design to Army Practice

The Army can carry these lessons into its expanding training system doing three things. First, the service should establish a performance-based simulator gate for advanced FPV courses. Students should demonstrate controlled manual flight, stable hover, deliberate yaw, and precision landing before using specialized facilities and instructor time. Those who do not meet the standard should complete additional home-station preparation.

Second, the Army should require installations to make representative FPV training routine. That requires approved areas for beyond-visual-line-of-sight training, varied terrain, crew operations, realistic communications constraints, payload-representative configurations, repair support, and safe terminal-effects training where authorized. Federal Aviation Administration and military airspace authorization processes already exist; installations must coordinate the applicable airspace, range, safety, and spectrum requirements to provide predictable access. As Charlie Phelps argued in a 2025 article, installations must supply the airspace and infrastructure for drone readiness. Once soldiers have a place to fly, the course must make them solve demanding problems there.

Third, the Army should develop instructors and evaluators who combine tactical experience with technical competence. Selected operators, maintainers, communications specialists, software and hardware experts, and acquisition personnel should observe mature partner training, compare it with US practice, and bring those lessons back into schoolhouses and field evaluations. Recurring exposure to current equipment and employment methods would help keep courses and requirements aligned with a capability area that changes faster than normal institutional cycles.

Graduation should depend on what a crew can repeatedly demonstrate. A useful standard would require tactical navigation and target-search tasks in both pilot and navigator roles, operation through degraded video, control of a payload-representative aircraft, recovery from common faults, and compliance with safety and crew-coordination standards. Courses should document performance against those tasks so that a qualification means the same thing when a soldier returns to a unit.

The Army is expanding drone courses, facilities, and acquisition pathways. These are important steps. But to maximize capability across its formations, it should establish common performance standards now, before programs settle on different definitions of proficiency. FPV capability requires crews that can employ the system through degraded video, difficult terrain, and imperfect equipment while completing tactical tasks.

These are the lessons we witnessed firsthand at Killhouse.

Warrant Officer 1 Jordan Bower is a US Army warrant officer who served with an operational data team supporting Ukraine. His work there included observation and analysis of FPV training and employment.

Master Sergeant Nico Martire serves with I Corps on an operational data team. He previously served with an operational data team supporting Ukraine.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 James L. Andreasen is an AH-64E Apache instructor pilot and aviation mission survivability officer at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Following a six-month assignment with Security Assistance Group–Ukraine, he contributes to the Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course and Army aviation modernization efforts focused on unmanned systems integration.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Chief Warrant Officer 3 James L. Andreasen, US Army