Building Fighter Pilots for the Software Age: Inside IFTS’s Training Approach

Traditional flight training has created a dangerous gap. A pilot can earn their wings, demonstrate proficiency in basic flight operations, and still be utterly unprepared for the cognitive demands of operating a fifth-generation fighter like the F-35 Lightning II. The old progression, from basic flight school through intermediate training to operational aircraft, was designed for an era when adding new capabilities to fighters meant bolting on new hardware. That world no longer exists.

Fifth-generation aircraft operate on an entirely different principle. New capabilities, enhancements, and even completely new tactical options can be added through software updates rather than physical modifications. This isn’t merely a technical detail. Rather, it represents a fundamental shift in what it means to be a combat aviator. When your aircraft’s capabilities can evolve between missions through a software download, your training must prepare you not for a fixed set of procedures but for continuous adaptation.

All told, the challenge facing modern fighter pilots has fundamentally shifted. Success in the cockpit no longer depends primarily on physical prowess or the ability to execute complex aerobatic maneuvers. Instead, the defining factor has become cognitive capacity: the ability to process massive amounts of information, make rapid decisions in contested electromagnetic environments, and operate as a node within a networked combat system.

At Italy’s International Flight Training School in Sardinia, powered by Leonardo in collaboration with CAE, this transformation isn’t just being acknowledged. It’s being systematically addressed through an approach that’s reshaping how Western air forces prepare aviators for combat. To get a better sense of this approach, I visited Decimomannu airbase, where IFTS resides, earlier this month.

Using the M-346 advanced trainer, a software-centric platform that mirrors the architecture of modern combat aircraft, IFTS can take operational concepts and tactical techniques directly from frontline F-35 or Eurofighter squadrons and integrate them into the training environment almost immediately. Students experience advanced combat concepts during Phase 4 training at IFTS rather than having to develop these skills after reaching operational units.

They’re not simply teaching pilots to fly the M-346 training aircraft. They’re reshaping the combat pilot’s “mental furniture,” the cognitive frameworks and decision-making patterns that determine effectiveness in modern air combat.

This metaphor captures something essential about contemporary fighter pilot training. In older aircraft, pilots dedicated enormous cognitive resources to basic aircraft control, constantly fighting the controls to maintain stability and execute maneuvers. Modern fly-by-wire systems handle these tasks automatically, freeing up massive amounts of mental bandwidth. But that creates a critical question: freed up for what?

IFTS’s answer is clear: that mental energy must be redirected toward information management and decision-making. Students must learn to process data from multiple sensors simultaneously, maintain situational awareness across a networked battlespace, make rapid decisions with incomplete information, and coordinate with other assets that may be miles away and operating under radio silence. These are fundamentally cognitive challenges, not physical ones.

Downloading Training for Advanced Fighters

What needed to be solved was how to download training on advanced jets to a trainer aircraft that costs significantly less to fly but which combined with live virtual constructive (LVC) systems could provide an experience replicating the cognitive challenges of operating the more advanced jet.

IFTS employs a four-cluster LVC training ecosystem that seamlessly integrates synthetic and live flight operations. Cluster One provides unlimited, cost-free practice using simulation-based trainers running actual aircraft software, allowing students to master basic systems and procedures without syllabus time constraints. Cluster Two introduces augmented and virtual reality technologies in full-fidelity cockpits, developing cognitive skills and decision-making abilities while tracking eye movements and attention patterns to enable adaptive, AI-enhanced training. These foundational clusters prepare students individually before they progress to integrated mission operations.

Cluster Three advances students to mission-level training where multiple entities, live aircraft, simulator-based pilots, and computer-generated forces, interact within common scenarios orchestrated from a central command room.

The capstone Cluster Four operates as an integration room that projects extended battlespace scenarios directly into live aircraft operations, injecting synthetic threats, surface-to-air missiles, and adversary aircraft that appear on pilots’ displays exactly as real threats would. This allows a single live aircraft to train against complex multi-ship scenarios with multiple synthetic entities, delivering operationally realistic training while dramatically reducing fuel consumption, maintenance costs, and environmental impact. The four clusters create a continuous learning progression from basic aircraft mastery to combat-ready operations in realistic multi-domain scenarios.

The Pipeline Revolution

Perhaps IFTS’s most significant innovation remains invisible to most observers: the complete harmonization of Italy’s entire fighter pilot training pipeline. Beginning in 2016, the Italian Air Force undertook a comprehensive review of every training phase, from basic flight training through operational conversion units to frontline squadrons. The goal was to eliminate all duplication of training events and ensure each phase builds directly on the previous one without gaps or redundancies.

To achieve this, the Italian Air Force created a unique feedback mechanism. Every six months, instructors from the M-346 program, the various operational conversion units for Eurofighter, Tornado, and F-35, and operational squadron pilots come together. They fly together, review procedures, and adjust curricula based on real-world operational experience.

This creates a continuous loop where operational lessons flow backward through the system. Squadrons deployed on NATO missions identify tactical or procedural changes based on evolving threats. These insights inform the conversion units, which adjust their training accordingly. The conversion units then tell IFTS instructors exactly what mental models and skills students need to arrive with, allowing them to refine the curriculum.

The results are measurable and dramatic. According to my discussions with Italian Air Officers at ISFTS, students graduating from Phase 4 now require thirty percent less training time at the Eurofighter operational conversion unit. They arrive already knowing the same tactics, radio calls, and procedures they’ll use operationally. They only need to learn the specific performance characteristics of their operational aircraft. The mental architecture is already in place. According to the Italian officers I interviewed at IFTS,  Italian students consistently score at the top of their class at Luke Air Force Base’s F-35 training program.

The Coalition Dimension

With twelve allied air forces now sending students to the Decimomannu airbase in Sardinia, including the U.S. Air Force, IFTS has become more than a training facility. It’s a coalition-building engine. By hosting students from multiple nations and maintaining complete transparency about curriculum and standards, the Italian Air Force builds trust and interoperability at the most fundamental level: the individual pilot’s training.

The Italian Air Force works with each partner air force being trained at IFTS to shape its curriculum based on need. If you are only flying 4th generation aircraft, you will be trained to do so; if you’re flying 5th generation aircraft material appropriate to that skill set is part of the curriculum. But your 4th generation pilots are very aware of the 5th generation impact with the constant “ready room” discussions of the pilots being trained throughout IFTS. After all, they already are fighter pilots; they are simply in the progression to their future squadrons.

Students return home not just with skills but with shared procedures, common tactical language, and personal relationships with pilots from other nations. They’ve literally been trained to think alike, to process information using the same mental frameworks, and to operate using compatible decision-making patterns. This cognitive alignment creates the foundation for effective coalition operations far more effectively than any amount of joint exercises or staff coordination after the fact.

As air forces worldwide grapple with fifth-generation integration, emerging technologies, and constrained budgets, the IFTS model demonstrates crucial principles: military ownership of standards matters even with industry support; harmonization across training pipelines eliminates waste; continuous feedback from operations keeps training relevant; and software-defined training systems match the reality of software-defined combat platforms.

The International Flight Training School isn’t just training pilots for today’s aircraft. It’s creating aviators whose mental furniture has been deliberately crafted for an uncertain future where software drives capability, information dominance determines outcomes, and coalition integration defines success. That’s the real revolution happening in Sardinia: not teaching pilots to fly better, but teaching them to think differently.

Published by Breaking Defense on October 23, 2025.

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