Training for the High-End Fight: The Paradigm Shift for Combat Pilot Training
I am launching a new book focused on the paradigm shift in combat pilot training.
The book is published in both English and Italian, appropriately enough because of the key Italian role in launching and succeeding doing so with their three-year-old International Flight Training School.
“Training for the High-End Fight: The Paradigm Shift for Combat Pilot Training” argues that modern air forces sit at a decisive inflection point where training has itself become strategic, and where the core task is no longer producing proficient platform operators but cognitively agile combat decision‑makers able to fight inside distributed kill webs in conditions of chaos rather than crisis.
The book opens from the vantage point of the post‑pandemic world, where the comforting notion of a “return” to traditional Great Power competition is dismissed as a misdiagnosis of a far more fluid and dangerous environment. Instead of a small set of predictable flashpoints and linear escalation pathways, I describe a landscape of overlapping crises, gray‑zone operations, and rapidly proliferating vectors of attack that compress decision timelines to seconds and blur the boundaries between peace and war. In this setting, I argue that Western militaries have shifted from a world of “crisis management” built on defined contingencies, rehearsed responses and relatively stable environments to one of “chaos management,” where forces must make sound decisions under ambiguity, reconfigure missions in real time, and operate effectively when plans are overtaken by events.
For combat aviation, this shift has profound implications. Traditional training pipelines, optimized for platform proficiency in relatively static threat environments, are no longer adequate when adversaries field new capabilities at a pace that can outstrip curriculum updates and when combat learning curves must be measured not in campaigns but in the first night of a war. The central problem is the need for a “rapid adaptive learning imperative”: the need to generate aviators who can learn, adapt, and innovate faster than opponents in an environment where the rules, actors, and technologies are constantly in flux.
A key conceptual lens for this new era is the evolution from linear “kill chains” to distributed “kill webs,” which anchors Part I of the book. Kill chains — find, fix, track, target, engage, assess — worked tolerably well when adversaries were less capable and when Western forces could assume uncontested access and predictable sequences of action. Against peer competitors with integrated air defenses, advanced sensors, and electronic warfare, such linear architectures become brittle and vulnerable to disruption.
Kill webs, by contrast, rest on a different architecture and mindset. Any sensor can inform any shooter, effects can be generated through multiple paths, and no single node is indispensable, creating a more resilient and opportunistic approach to generating combat power. Fifth‑generation aircraft such as the F‑35 sit at the center of this logic not simply as superior fighters, but as “flying information systems” that sense, fuse, and distribute data across air, land, sea, space, and cyber while orchestrating effects throughout the web. As Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Pasquale Preziosa notes in his foreword, this is a historic break from the platform‑centric, linear kill chain model and demands aviators who can think and act as nodes in a distributed, multi‑domain architecture rather than as single‑platform specialists.
This transformation in turn drives a redefinition of what constitutes “basic warfighting capability.” Citing senior naval aviation leaders, I underscore that a distributed fleet without integratability without interactive kill webs would actually weaken the force, making networked, interoperable operations foundational rather than a boutique adjunct to traditional tactics. Training, therefore, must shift from teaching pilots how to execute predefined roles in scripted strike packages to teaching them how to operate, improvise, and lead inside a web where authorities, information advantages, and tactical opportunities shift dynamically.
Both forewords reinforce the book’s central claim that the center of gravity in air warfare has migrated from hardware to the mind in the cockpit. Preziosa stresses that in a battlespace characterized by compressed timelines and contested information, the decisive question is no longer whether an aviator can fly the assigned mission, but whether he or she can think, decide, and reconfigure the mission when reality diverges from the plan. Brian Morra, in turn, ties this to the broader transition from crisis to chaos management, arguing that aviators must arrive at combat ready to “fight and win on the first night of the war” in environments more lethal and ambiguous than anything experienced in earlier conflicts.
The pilot is no longer just an operator of a high‑performance aircraft, but a node of command in a distributed system, responsible for assimilating vast data flows, coordinating with assets across domains, and making decisions with strategic consequences, often without immediate higher‑level guidance. This cognitive load is amplified by the software‑defined nature of modern platforms, where capabilities evolve continuously via upgrades and where the relationship between manned aircraft, unmanned systems, and ground or maritime nodes is in constant flux.
The result is a demanding profile: aviators must be technically fluent, tactically creative, and “cognitively fast,” with the judgment to deviate from plans when required and the intuition to exploit fleeting opportunities in a dynamic kill web. Training systems built for an earlier era, focused on sequential progressions, fixed syllabi, and individual platform mastery, were never designed to produce this kind of combat decision‑maker.
In revisiting themes from my earlier work on U.S. services, I dissect the assumptions baked into traditional pilot training pipelines. Those systems presupposed relatively stable adversary capabilities, long lead times before combat deployment, and a focus on individual proficiency in platform‑specific tactics. Syllabi might be updated every few years; once revised, they could remain valid for extended periods because the external environment changed slowly.
By contrast, today’s threat environment is characterized by rapid, opaque evolution. Adversaries iterate concepts and field new capabilities at a pace that can render carefully designed training packages obsolete before they are fully implemented. Many innovations are only revealed in live operations, which means that training must prepare aviators not just for known threats, but for discovering and countering previously unseen tactics under fire.
Moreover, the platforms themselves have changed. Fifth‑generation aircraft compress into a single cockpit tasks that previously required multiple platforms and command nodes, making even basic proficiency difficult to achieve. Yet platform proficiency alone is insufficient because these aircraft are meant to operate as part of an integrated system; their true value emerges when pilots understand how to employ them as hubs in a larger kill web. A training model which treats integration as a late‑stage, advanced skill added after individual proficiency is achieved is structurally misaligned with this reality.
This mismatch between technology and training is one of the book’s recurring themes. One of the central purposes of the book is to document how one air force, the Italian Air Force, has chosen to close this gap by redesigning its training system from the ground up.
The heart of the book is an in‑depth case study of the Italian Air Force’s International Flight Training School (IFTS) at Decimomannu, Sardinia, framed as a live prototype of how an advanced air force can generate cognitive readiness for fifth‑generation warfare. I trace this development back to Italy’s broader strategic choices: investing in Cameri as an F‑35 production and sustainment hub; embracing the F‑35 as a centerpiece of its airpower modernization; and consciously building a national “Sistema Paese” ecosystem that integrates industry, operational units, and training in a continuous feedback loop.
IFTS emerges in this narrative as a capstone of that ecosystem. Rather than a narrow training contract, it is presented as a national combat preparation enterprise co‑developed by the Italian Air Force, Leonardo, CAE, and international partners. Operational feedback from front‑line F‑35 and Eurofighter units flows directly into the school, which in turn rapidly updates curricula and training tools, sometimes multiple times within a single nine‑month course. This agility breaks with legacy models where syllabi hardened into doctrine and were revised only at long intervals.
Crucially, IFTS is deeply international. Within just three years of full operation, thirteen air forces had already chosen to send their pilots there, effectively treating the Italian model as a shared engine of coalition airpower. The strategic significance of this choice is clear: coalition integration is no longer something improvised at the onset of a crisis but is being built into the instincts of aviators from the first day of advanced training.
Parts II through V of the book are devoted to a granular examination of the Live‑Virtual‑Constructive (LVC) architecture that underpins the IFTS concept. What makes the school revolutionary is not a single aircraft or simulator, but the creation of a fully integrated combat preparation ecosystem in which live flights, high‑fidelity simulators, and computer‑generated forces coexist within a common architecture.
A governing principle is “one simulation”: the same software and models run in the real aircraft, in full‑mission simulators, and in simpler desktop trainers, which eliminates negative training and allows students to move seamlessly along the spectrum from basic procedures to complex multi‑ship missions. Roughly half of the nine‑month course is spent in synthetic environments, but this proportion understates the impact because students have unlimited access to the Simulation‑Based Trainer, enabling them to arrive at higher‑end events with far greater cognitive preparation than in traditional syllabi.
The book organizes this architecture into four “clusters” that map an escalating learning journey:
- Cluster One: systems mastery and procedural competence in desktop and part‑task trainers, building a deep understanding of the M‑346’s systems before formal simulator checks or live flight.
- Cluster Two: immersive augmented/virtual/extended reality environments designed to develop combat cognition, decision‑making, and situational awareness while explicitly acknowledging that full replication of G‑forces and physiological stress remains elusive.
- Cluster Three: mission‑level integration in which pilots in multiple simulators—and potentially live aircraft—participate together in scenarios controlled by mission commanders who can inject friction, adjust difficulty, and observe performance in real time.
- Cluster Four: an “integration room” that projects extended, multi‑domain battlespace scenarios directly into live aircraft operating over Sardinia by injecting synthetic aircraft, surface‑to‑air missile systems, maritime threats, and electronic warfare emitters into the pilots’ sensor picture.
- This architecture yields several strategic benefits. First, it allows a single live aircraft to experience a battlespace that feels like a full combat package, surrounded by synthetic friends and foes whose behavior can be scripted or adaptive. Second, it dramatically reduces the environmental and resource burden of large‑force exercises by replacing many live sorties with virtual counterparts while preserving tactical complexity. Third, it provides an instrumented environment that generates rich data for individual remediation and systemic improvement.
The book discusses how emerging technologies, especially extended reality, biometrics, and AI, are being used to instrument cognition itself. In Cluster Two, for example, eye‑tracking and workload metrics capture where students look, how they scan, and what they miss during scenarios, helping instructors target interventions and differentiate between successful and unsuccessful cognitive strategies.
By aggregating this data across classes, IFTS is beginning to define empirical profiles of what “good” looks like for different phases of training and potentially even for selection into fifth‑generation pipelines. This opens the possibility of more scientifically grounded screening processes, particularly important when dealing with cohorts that have grown up immersed in digital and gaming environments and may process information differently from older generations.
The M‑346 Block 20 upgrade features prominently here, with its transition to a large‑area display and helmet‑mounted systems that more closely mirror F‑35 cockpit paradigms. Coupled with embedded tactical training systems that can realistically simulate weapons and threat systems that are not physically present, the trainer becomes a software‑defined bridge into fifth‑generation operations. This is not simply a hardware refresh but a cognitive alignment, allowing students to internalize F‑35‑like information management patterns before they ever touch the aircraft.
I also highlight plans for AI‑enabled coaching that will learn from thousands of logged flight and simulator hours to tailor feedback, flag emerging performance issues, and suggest optimized training paths, effectively weaponizing big data for pedagogy. Combined with biometric monitoring of stress and cognitive load, this points toward a future in which pilot training is continuously adaptive, individualized, and tightly coupled to operational lessons learned.
The physical context of Decimomannu, located on Sardinia’s is itself a strategic enabler of the IFTS model. The island offers unusually large, relatively unconstrained airspace in European terms, with dedicated military areas over land and sea that allow complex scenarios without constant deconfliction with civilian traffic. This freedom of maneuver is paired with live bombing ranges and an electronic warfare range, enabling integration of real ordnance drops and genuine threat emitters into LVC‑driven scenarios.
The island setting naturally emphasizes multi‑domain threats. From the integration room, operators can create air, maritime, and land‑based threats within a single operating picture, forcing students to manage a battlespace that more closely resembles real operations in littoral and archipelagic environments. This is connected directly to the emerging realities of Indo‑Pacific and Mediterranean operations, where air forces must routinely contend with overlapping naval and ground‑based systems.
Weather is another practical, but strategically consequential, factor. With flyable conditions for the vast majority of the year, IFTS can maintain throughput without the extended weather‑grounding periods common in northern European sites, an important consideration when course timelines are compressed and demand from multiple air forces is constant. This regularity underwrites the school’s ability to deliver a complete, high‑intensity syllabus without sacrificing content to calendar pressures.
A central insight distilled from Preziosa’s foreword and my concluding chapters is that training is no longer a support function but “the first arena of sovereignty.” In a world of chaos management and kill webs, a nation’s ability to generate aviators who can think and decide at the speed of relevance becomes a strategic capability on par with owning advanced platforms. Without such aviators, even exquisite aircraft and networks cannot be fully exploited; with them, nations can deter and adapt more effectively than adversaries who remain trapped in legacy training paradigms.
Italy’s path is presented as a case of strategic foresight vindicated. Decisions made years earlier, to invest in Cameri, to commit to the F‑35, to pursue an international training school, faced skepticism and opposition, but have now produced a European training hub that both serves national needs and amplifies Italy’s influence within NATO and beyond. Laird portrays this as a model of how mid‑sized powers can use training and industrial ecosystems to punch above their weight in alliance airpower.
The coalition dimension is particularly important. By putting pilots from thirteen (and potentially more) nations through a common LVC‑based syllabus, IFTS is building shared procedures, instincts, and mental models long before any future coalition crisis emerges. In Laird’s view, this means that future coalitions will not be hastily assembled improvisations but communities of practice already accustomed to thinking and fighting together.
The real question facing Western airpower is not whether to adopt LVC or fifth‑generation platforms, that trend is already underway, but how quickly training institutions can internalize the cognitive demands of software‑defined, kill‑web warfare.
I argue that there several elements of a “path forward” distilled from the Italian example:
- Treat training as a strategic enterprise integrated with operations and industry, not as a downstream function.
- Design training architectures around a unified simulation environment so that live, virtual, and constructive elements reinforce each other and evolve together.
- Embrace rapid curriculum adaptation driven by operational feedback, abandoning multi‑year refresh cycles in favor of near‑continuous updates.
- Instrument cognition, not just performance, using eye‑tracking, biometrics, and AI to understand how students think and where they struggle, enabling targeted coaching and improved selection.
- Build coalition interoperability into training from the outset, leveraging common syllabi and shared facilities to create genuinely integrated airpower communities.
Transformation is neither simple nor complete. It challenges institutional traditions, acquisition cultures, and comfort with well‑worn methods that served earlier generations well.
Yet the cost of failing to adapt to fielding next‑generation aircraft flown by pilots trained for the last war is far higher.
“Training for the High‑End Fight” thus serves simultaneously as a case study, a warning, and a roadmap.
By chronicling how the Italian Air Force and its partners have turned Sardinia into an engine of cognitive readiness, the book provides an examination of innovation in practice and a set of concrete lessons for any air force seeking to prepare aviators for the unforgiving realities of chaos‑era, kill‑web warfare.
Training for the High-End Fight: The Paradigm Shift for Combat Pilot Training
The book is publlished in Italian and highlgihted here:
Addestramento per il Combattimento Avanzato: Il Nuovo Paradigma della Formazione dei Piloti
And for a video discussing the main themes of t he book, see the following: