No Second Chances

A German Gepard in unique camo colours, popular in both games and in drone defense in Ukraine.

The era surrounding 2014 was one where life in some parts of the world could not have been more different than life in the West. Around 2014, when the Syrian Wars became very hot and violent, most people were sitting in their homes, playing games like Call of Duty with actual combat being the farthest thing from their mind. While the following years gave way to some youth in the West becoming ISIS fighters, the average family hardly felt this effect or were plagued by their children going abroad to brutalise people in Iraq and Syria.

Despite that era being one where some of the oldest communities in the Middle East were almost completely wiped out, things in Europe and North America changed very little. Even when returned ISIS fighters came back to the West, little was done in many cases to charge them, seek justice for their victims, or even take actions to protect communities in Western countries from future attacks. Even today, there is little mention of it or measures to compensate victims of acts done by Western citizens in Iraq and Syria, despite the world being a much more divisive place in 2025.

Post-Covid seemed to change the norm in many of these formerly peaceful communities. They still played games and watched similar media, still ignored many of the horrors abroad, and did little to think they would be in a dire situation themselves. The 2022 War in Ukraine took young video game players, ones with online friends in your town who played the same games and had similar lives to their team members in the West, and put many of them in the front of actual combat.

Some successes of these formerly peaceful game players and average kids were mentioned on the battlefield. In a well known incident, caught mostly on video, two Ukrainian operated American Bradley armoured personnel vehicles were able to disable one Russian T-90M tank, the most modern Russian tank on the battlefield. The tactics and knowledge they used against the ultra modern T-90M was claimed by one of the Bradley crews to be the result of playing the game War Thunder, a simplified war vehicle simulator. To improvise during the tense situation, the Bradley did something he often did in game when he targeted the sensors of an enemy tank. With the experience he had fighting against other real players online, he took to damaging the equipment of the enemy tank so he could stop the enemy from firing on the two Bradleys. While the game is not exactly designed to be a proper simulator for the Bradley or the T-90M, it enabled the driver to have a tactical mind and improvise an idea learned from their earlier days playing one of their favourite games. To note, the T-90M did not make it, and it is not clear if the Russian crew survived.

A simplified simulation of many of the systems used in Ukraine and in other parts of the world may train this generation in quick responses in actual combat. Many weapons designs are often based on control mechanisms for an XBox or Playstation, and playing something like the game mentioned above may introduce soldiers in how to manage the targeting system of a Gepard or ZSU-23-4 radar in shooting down drones attacking cities in Ukraine. It is likely the case that drone systems have already benefitted from controls and imaging seen in many modern games, drones which have changed the face of battle since 2022.

The unfortunate reality of combat in Ukraine and other parts of the world is that such technological advancements also make it very difficult to survive a war. There are estimates of thousands of young men losing their lives weekly in Ukraine, and the total number of deaths of soldiers in the war is approaching levels of losses not seen since the Second World War. Quick and rapid defeats have been recently seen in the air conflict between Pakistan and India, where many pilots likely lost their lives in the first few hours of combat with little chance to survive modern weapons technology. An advanced and well planned attack may remove the defense of military targets without a means of response, weighting one military’s strength to such a great degree that it would mirror the strategic victory at Pearl Harbor. The reality of modern warfare is that most will not survive, and for many of those on the battlefield who are more alike than different, it would be best if they were challenging each other online instead of using those skills to massacre each other on the battlefield.