The Italian Air Force Pilot’s Path to the Cockpit
The journey to becoming an Italian military fighter pilot is a rigorous, multi-year process that transforms civilians with no flight experience into combat-ready aviators. Italy’s approach is methodical and structured, consisting of five distinct phases that progressively build skills, assess aptitude, and ultimately produce some of Europe’s most capable military pilots.
Understanding this training pipeline is crucial for grasping how modern air forces develop their personnel. Each phase serves a specific purpose, with built-in selection points that ensure only those with the right combination of skill, determination, and aptitude continue forward. What makes the Italian system particularly interesting is how it balances early selection with advanced specialization, creating multiple decision points that match students with the roles where they’ll excel.
Phase One: First Flight and Initial Selection
Every Italian military pilot’s journey begins in Latina, a city southeast of Rome that houses the initial selection program. Here, candidates who have never touched an aircraft’s controls take their first flights aboard the T-260 aircraft. This phase, lasting just a few months, serves a critical gatekeeping function.
The instructors aren’t primarily teaching advanced skills at this stage. Instead, they’re evaluating raw potential.
• Can this person handle the physical demands of flight?
• Do they maintain composure under stress?
• Can they process multiple streams of information simultaneously while controlling an aircraft?
These fundamental questions must be answered before the military invests significant resources in a candidate’s training.
It’s a winnowing process by design. Instructors carefully observe each student’s natural aptitude, looking for that ineffable quality that separates those who can fly from those who can truly become military pilots. Some candidates discover that flying isn’t for them. Others reveal natural talents they didn’t know they possessed. By the end of Phase One, instructors have identified which students should continue to basic training.
Phase Two: Learning to Fly the Military Way
Those who successfully complete initial selection move on to Phase Two, where the real work of becoming a military pilot begins. This basic training phase typically lasts approximately nine months during which students fly the M-345.
Phase Two represents a fundamental shift in approach. Students are no longer being evaluated purely on potential for now they’re being actively taught how to fly according to military standards and procedures. This means mastering not just the mechanics of flight but understanding military aviation from a tactical and operational perspective.
The training combines extensive ground school with actual flight time. In the classroom, students learn aerodynamics, navigation, meteorology, aircraft systems, and military flight regulations. In the air, they practice basic maneuvers, emergency procedures, and begin to internalize the discipline and precision that military aviation demands.
While Phase Two is primarily focused on teaching rather than selection, it still functions as an evaluation period. Not every student who enters will successfully complete this phase. The difference is that instructors are now assessing whether students can learn and apply military flying skills, rather than just evaluating raw potential.
The Critical Crossroads: Track Selection
At the conclusion of Phase Two comes one of the most significant moments in any Italian military pilot’s career: track selection. Based on their performance, aptitude, and the military’s needs, students are assigned to one of three possible paths that will define their future careers: fighter, transport, or helicopter tracks.
The fighter track is for those who will fly high-performance combat aircraft. The transport track leads to multi-engine cargo and passenger aircraft. The helicopter track produces rotary-wing pilots who will fly a variety of missions from transport to search and rescue. While the military considers headquarters requirements when making assignments, the selection is primarily based on each student’s demonstrated strengths and capabilities during Phase Two.
This selection point mirrors what happens in other air forces, such as the U.S. system where students are similarly divided into fighter, transport, or helicopter tracks. It’s a crucial decision point because it determines not just what aircraft a pilot will fly, but the entire trajectory of their military career.
Phase Three: Specialized Advanced Training
Once track selection is complete, students proceed to Phase Three, where training becomes specialized based on their assigned path. The Italian Air Force operates three different Phase Three schools each tailored to its specific track.
Fighter track students report to Lecce, specifically the base at Galatina, for their advanced fighter training. Here they’ll fly the M-339, though these older aircraft are scheduled for replacement as the fleet ages.
This phase typically lasts around six months and represents the culmination of basic pilot training. Students learn advanced maneuvers, tactical flying, and begin to think like fighter pilots. The training is intensive, building on everything learned in the previous phases while introducing the complexity and performance characteristics of faster, more capable aircraft.
The significance of Phase Three cannot be overstated: upon successful completion, students receive their military pilot wings. This is a milestone moment, the official recognition that they have transformed from civilians into qualified military pilots. They’ve proven they can fly, they can fly in a military manner, and they can handle the aircraft assigned to their track.
For transport and helicopter track students, Phase Three occurs at different locations and focuses on the unique skills required for their respective aircraft types. But regardless of track, all students face the same challenge: demonstrating they deserve to wear those coveted pilot wings.
At the end of Phase Three, transport and helicopter pilots finally receive their operational squadron assignments.
Phase Four: Elite Fighter Training at IFTS
Here’s where the Italian system takes an interesting turn. For most students, receiving their wings marks the end of training school and the beginning of operational assignments. But for fighter track pilots, there’s an additional phase: the International Flight Training School, or IFTS.
This is a critical distinction that often causes confusion. When fighter pilots arrive at IFTS, they are not students hoping to earn their wings for they are already qualified military pilots who have earned their wings at the end of Phase Three. IFTS is advanced fighter training for pilots who have already proven their basic competency.
The IFTS program lasts nine to ten months, making it one of the longest individual training phases in the entire pipeline. The extended duration reflects the comprehensive nature of the training. By the time pilots arrive at IFTS, they know which fighter aircraft they’ll be flying in the operational Air Force, either the Eurofighter Typhoon or the F-35 Lightning II. However, they don’t yet know their specific squadron assignment.
IFTS program consists of a modular theoretical-practical training for any graduated military pilot prior to his employment in operational fighter squadron. Pilots are basically trained in Air-to-Air (AA) and Air-to-Ground (AG) and a number of additional modules, such as Air to Air Refuelling (AAR) or Air to Ground Range (RNG), which will expand trainee‘s overall skills by the end of training.
The training at IFTS is intensive and wide-ranging, covering advanced tactical flying, weapons employment, combat maneuvers, and the complex systems that make modern fighter aircraft so capable. These are no longer students learning to fly; rather they’re qualified pilots learning to fight.
At the end of Phase Four, fighter pilots finally receive their operational squadron assignments.
Phase Five: Operational Conversion
The final step in the training pipeline is the Operational Conversion Unit, or OCU. Despite being called a “unit,” OCUs are actually training squadrons dedicated to transitioning pilots from training aircraft to their operational fighters. Italy maintains separate OCUs for the Eurofighter and the F-35, each staffed by experienced operational pilots who serve as instructors.
The OCU phase typically lasts six to nine months, though the exact duration can vary based on the specific aircraft and the pace at which individual pilots progress. This is where pilots finally get their hands on the actual fighters they’ll fly in operational squadrons. Everything learned at IFTS is now applied to the real aircraft, with all its capabilities, complexity, and performance.
Training at the OCU covers aircraft systems in depth, tactical employment, weapons delivery, and integration into squadron operations. Pilots learn not just how to fly their aircraft, but how to employ it as a weapon system in various scenarios. They practice air-to-air combat, air-to-ground strikes, and the myriad other missions their aircraft might be called upon to perform.
They report as qualified fighter pilots, ready to integrate into their unit’s operations and continue developing their skills through operational flying.
The Complete Journey
From first flight in Latina to operational squadron assignment represents a journey of several years and multiple evaluation points. Each phase serves its purpose: Phase One identifies potential, Phase Two teaches fundamentals, Phase Three develops specialized skills and awards wings, Phase Four provides advanced fighter training, and Phase Five completes the transition to operational aircraft.
The Italian system’s structure reflects the realities of modern military aviation. Flying high-performance fighters requires not just natural aptitude or learned skills, but both combined with extensive training, continuous evaluation, and progressive specialization. By the time a pilot reaches an operational squadron, they’ve been assessed, taught, tested, and refined through multiple phases, each building on the last.
This pipeline doesn’t just produce pilots; it produces combat aviators ready to operate some of the world’s most sophisticated aircraft in defense of their nation. Understanding this progression illuminates how modern air forces develop their most critical asset, the highly trained pilots who fly the nation’s combat aircraft.
I have recently visited the Italian International Flight Training School on Sardinia.
This is the first of several articles based on my interviews and discussions while visiting the Sardinia base in October 2025.
The AI generated image highlights the international engagement at IFTS, and the integration of the LVC ecosystem with the M-346 live aircraft. The level of integration is quite remarkable.