Prince Harry has been promoted to Army Air Corps Captain after five years of serving in the army. He was also awarded his Apache Badge from the Officer in Command of his squadron following his completion of the eight-month Apache Conversion to Type course.

Palace officials confirmed over the weekend that Prince William’s younger brother is now qualified to man the helicopter solo without the need for an instructor guiding his every move.

Prince Harry has also marked his five years in the army and has earned his rights to be addressed as Captain Harry Wales.

"Prince Harry has been promoted to captain within the Army Air Corps in recognition of time service in the armed forces," a palace spokesman was quoted as saying by the Agence France Presse.

But the reward came without hard work.

Prince Harry was first commissioned as an army officer in April 2006. He began training in July 2010 where he spends time and study both day and night flying through a simulator.

Since July last year, Prince Harry had done all his exercises indoors. But he was allowed a two-week mountain flying exercises in the French Alps where he was able to test his skills flying in cloud and navigating a ‘complex and congested airspace’

The younger prince is now ready to take on the higher level of his training - - learning to operate its weapons systems, particularly the Apache weapons systems.

This kind of weaponry said AFP is designed to hunt and destroy armoured vehicles. It carries mix of weapons like rockets, Hellfire missiles and a 30 millimetre chain gun.

Prince Harry is expected to spend some parts of the training in the United States. The young prince has earlier expressed hopes to be deployed after he had enriched his skills undergoing the different kinds of trainings he began in 2006.

The younger son of Princess Diana had spent ten weeks in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2008 where he was exposed to the battlefield. He was involved in providing directions to jets dropping bombs on Taliban positions in Helmand.

Prince Harry said: "You become a very expensive asset, the training's very expensive and they wouldn't have me doing what I'm doing -- I'd just be taking up a spare place for somebody else -- if they didn't have me going out on the job."

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