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Russia's Drone Training Push Targets Children as Young as Seven

From classrooms to combat drones: Russia's youth are being groomed for war. Factories already employ teens to assemble weapons used in Ukraine.

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1 min read
The image shows an old Soviet propaganda poster from the 1930s depicting a boy and an angel flying...
The image shows an old Soviet propaganda poster from the 1930s depicting a boy and an angel flying over a city. The poster has text written on it, likely providing further information about the scene.

Russia's Drone Training Push Targets Children as Young as Seven

Russia is rapidly expanding its drone training programmes, targeting children as young as seven. By 2026, the country will host its first national drone piloting championship for schoolchildren, called Pilots of the Future. The push comes as part of a broader effort to train a new generation of drone specialists—with over 500 schools and 30 colleges already teaching drone assembly and operation by August 2025. The training begins early. Russian schoolchildren now take lessons in drone piloting, often taught by operators with frontline combat experience. In May 2025, Geoscan—a Russian drone manufacturer under US sanctions—released a textbook on drone piloting for students aged 13 to 15. The government has also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into converting classrooms into drone training hubs.

Beyond education, teenagers are being put to work. At the Alabuga factory in Tatarstan, students from local institutes and foreign workers assemble Shahed drones on industrial production lines. These drones have been used to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities have increasingly shifted educational resources toward military needs, preparing young people for roles as drone operators and assembly workers. The scale of the programme is ambitious. By 2030, Russia aims to train one million drone specialists, many of them starting their education in primary school.

The Pilots of the Future championship in 2026 will mark another step in Russia's long-term strategy. Schools across the country now integrate drone training into their official curricula, while factories rely on students to assemble military hardware. With significant funding and institutional support, the programme is set to produce a large workforce of young drone operators and technicians in the coming years.

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