When you're Britain's second-in-line to the throne, it’s crucial to understand how the UK intelligence services work and how to defend yourself in an emergency. Prince William grew up knowing he was a potential target, much like King Charles, who avoided a 1994 security scare, and Princess Anne who talked her way out of an attempted kidnapping in which her bodyguard and three others were shot.

Before Princess Diana's death in a 1997 car crash, the prince’s mother was a regular at the police gun range and she once brought young William and Harry along. Both boys reveled in firing a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver under the close supervision of a police instructor, according to the King’s former secretary Sarah Goodall, author of The Palace Diaries.

Prince William’s training certainly didn’t end there. Here are five tales about his surprisingly close ties to Britain’s spies and security services.

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1. Prince William is no stranger to action and adventure

After graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Prince William served with the Blues and Royals Army cavalry regiment. William also received his Royal Air Force wings and later joined the RAF Search and Rescue Force. While seconded to train with the Royal Navy, the prince was part of a £40m drug seizure in the Atlantic, northeast of Barbados, and he was a crew member on the Lynx helicopter when the team seized 900 kg (almost 2,000 pounds) of cocaine from a speedboat.

William’s work as a full-time, search-and-rescue helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance seems to have hit William hard, however. "Something that I noticed from my brief spell flying the air ambulance with the team is, when you see so much death and so much bereavement, it does impact how you see the world," William said. "It impacts your own life and your own family life because it is always there."

2. Embedded with MI6 spies‍

William was 36 when he embedded with Britain’s three main spy agencies - MI6, MI5, and the cyber experts at GCHQ - for a three-week apprenticeship in 2019.

MI6, aka Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, is the equivalent of the CIA and works secretly around the world to stop terrorism and disrupt hostile states. Much of William’s time was spent at MI6’s HQ - made famous in the Bond movies - learning about human intelligence (HUMINT) and how MI6 officers spot, assess, develop, run, and train foreign spies to do MI6's bidding overseas.

Prince William also learned how MI6 monitors security risks and military effectiveness, and about covert action and how to exploit overseas opportunities to Britain's advantage, according to Rory Cormac’s Spying and the Crown. 

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3. MI5 training

William spent another week training with Britain’s MI5, the UK's largely domestic spy service. MI5 was established in 1909 to counter German espionage in WWI and more recently has dealt with terrorist threats from Northern Ireland, Libya, and Islamic extremists. 

MI5 employs more than 5,000 staff and the prince’s 2019 training came months after a particularly difficult period in which Britain endured terrorist attacks on London Bridge, the Manchester Arena bombing, and a threat to PM Theresa May’s life.

William is understood to have worked with MI5’s counter-terrorism teams to see how they conduct investigations including the use of analysis and surveillance.

4. GCHQ cyber spy training

Week three of the Duke's assignment landed him at GCHQ in Cheltenham, England where he was brought up to speed on cutting-edge technology and partnerships to identify, analyze, and disrupt cyber threats.

"He asked some probing questions and demonstrated a real grasp of our mission,” according to GCHQ’s head of counter-terrorism operations (known only as David). “This was a rare opportunity to expose, in detail, the technical ingenuity and problem-solving skills needed on a daily basis."

5. Britain and Ukraine briefings‍

In February 2022, hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, the heir to the British throne made an unscheduled visit to MI6 HQ for an intelligence briefing. The visit wasn’t publicized and only appeared afterward in the Court Circular of Royal engagements. There was no detail about who William met or what was discussed.

A year later in March 2023, in another unscheduled visit, the prince traveled to southeast Poland to meet Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak and to thank British and Polish troops based there.