Drone pilot students: An innovative training that opens the doors to the military.

In a buzz, the quadcopter lifts off the ground before weaving between poles. At the controls is Quentin, a student in the professional baccalaureate option in drone technology, a unique school program in France that interests the army.

Eleven students from the Louise Weiss high school in Sainte-Marie-aux-mines, an Alsatian town of 5,000 inhabitants nestled in the Vosges mountains, are the first to inaugurate this specialty as part of their professional baccalaureate in Ciel (Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Networks, Electronics).

In the electronics laboratory, the teenagers are engrossed in various activities. Two of them are leaning over a test bench and working on lift.

They are “running the engines in stages, faster and faster to find out at what speed the drone is likely to take off,” explains teacher Jean-Marc Bour.

Damien, 18, faces an S500 V2 kit: “I have to assemble it from A to Z, to understand how to build a drone, what material is used, what motor, what battery, etc.,” he enumerates. The goal: to learn to “create it ourselves.”

The only girl in the class, Charlotte is interested in a model of a ruined tower, reconstructed in 3D using images captured by a drone.

During the training, the young girl learned a number of rules related to the use of these devices, such as “there are certain areas where flying is prohibited and you need authorization.”

By including a drone option in this vocational baccalaureate, “the idea was to create an innovative program that does not exist anywhere else at the moment by using the drone as a tool,” explains the high school principal, François Ginoux.

The school has partnered with the air and space army. Army instructors have taught drone piloting to students and have shown them around air bases in the region.

These are skills that “interest” the army, explains Pascal Fischer, who heads the Air Force Regional Recruitment Center. “We need drones” for surveillance and security at military sites, and trained individuals capable of “implementing countermeasures” against hostile drones, he continues.

The Army had 3,000 drones at the beginning of the year, and will have 15,000 by the end of 2026.

“Our effort is to stay at the forefront of technology and have every soldier be a drone operator,” emphasized General Philippe de Montenon, commander of the land operational force, at the end of April, on the last day of the vast military exercise Orion 26.

Among the students at Louise-Weiss, 17-year-old Nolan aspires to a military career and hopes that his knowledge in drone technology will be “a little extra, an asset that others may not necessarily have.”

While using a drone as a weapon is “not the goal,” the teenager instead imagines using it for “reconnaissance” or “reconnaissance” operations.

In addition to the military, “other sectors are quite promising,” points out the principal, Mr. Ginoux, mentioning “companies that search for heat loss in their installations” or the agricultural sector.

Alban, 20, sees drone technology more as a “hobby.” “But through the partnership with the army, I also learned that it has practical applications. I found it quite interesting,” testifies the young man.

Mr. Ginoux states that the drone option has “rekindled real interest” in the Ciel professional baccalaureate, and he has had to “even refuse students at the beginning of the year.”

His goal is to sustain this program, which could expand. “It would be interesting if the National Education system took up this experience to extend it to several high schools in France,” says the principal, emphasizing that to date, there is “no equivalent program.”