Background and objectives:

The use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or more commonly known as drones, has grown exponentially in the last years not only in military but also in civilian environments. No specific procedures to clearly delimitate assessment variables for these pilots have been described. Therefore, there is a general tendency in the assessment of RPAS pilots, to apply similar assessments to those carried out for piloted aircraft pilots. The main aim of this exploratory study was to analyze specific variables and aptitudes which affect RPAS pilots belonging to the Emergency Military Unit (UME).

Material and method:

Several personality and aptitude tests were administered to 19 UME pilots.

Results:

The most important finding of the present study was the dominance of three cognitive aptitudes (spatial aptitude, attention and mechanical aptitude) in expert pilots over the rest of the participants.

Conclusions:

This result contributes to the creation in the future of more specific procedures of assessment for RPAS pilots, if further research with bigger samples confirms the data found in the present study.