Army medics will experience the battlefield without ever leaving the country after engineers developed a ground-breaking virtual reality simulator to mimic the difficulties of working in a warzone.

The life-like simulator recreates the cramped conditions inside a moving Chinook helicopter where medical staff often have to resuscitate or stabilise critically wounded soldiers as they are evacuated to field hospitals.

The Ministry of Defence currently instructs medics in grounded helicopters at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, but the training fails to capture the true difficulty of operating on a bumpy flight while pilots dodge a hail of machine gun fire.

Many medics say they struggle to carry out procedures in the field while being thrown around a moving helicopter amid extreme levels of stress.