Rethinking Air Combat Training for the Fifth Generation: Lessons from Australia’s Air Power Evolution

During my visit to Australia in May and June 2025, I had the opportunity to engage with Air Vice-Marshal Glen Braz, Air Commander Australia, on one of the most pressing challenges facing modern air forces: how to train pilots for networked, multi-domain warfare. Our conversations, which began at the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on May 22 and continued in depth at his office on June 3, revealed the profound transformation required to prepare aviators for fifth-generation operations.

At the foundation seminar’s “Cost Per Effect” panel, chaired by Air Marshal (Retd) Darren Goldie and featuring Professor Justin Bronk and Air Vice Marshal John Haly, Braz articulated a central reality: air power remains “fundamentally central to the national defense strategy.” Yet Australia’s approach to developing this capability is evolving rapidly.

“We need to find smarter, faster, more agile ways to deliver air power that makes a difference at scale, at range and at speed,” Braz explained. “This isn’t just about buying platforms; it’s about building comprehensive capability through people, preparedness, and integrated systems.”

This distinction proves crucial when considering Australia’s strategic geography. The National Defence Strategy calls for moving resources north, but infrastructure development takes time. In the interim, forces must manage risk while building credible deterrent capabilities with existing assets. This is a challenge that places enormous emphasis on human adaptability and system integration.

Despite commanding approximately 12,000 personnel across Air Force capabilities, Braz remains focused on the human dimension of air power. “This is a human endeavor,” he emphasized. “These humans might use tools that are increasingly uncrewed or increasingly autonomous, but it’s a human endeavor.”

The Air Force is responding by developing more flexible personnel who can operate across multiple roles while maintaining core technical proficiency. “We’re typically very specialist and very bespoke,” Braz noted, “but we need to broaden people’s aperture and use their intellect and talent in a myriad of ways.”

This approach doesn’t compromise standards. Air Force personnel remain “incredibly proficient” in their specialist roles. Instead, it involves accepting calculated risk in how people are employed while building resilience through cross-training and adaptability.

The training challenge becomes particularly acute when considering how rapidly modern air combat systems evolve. Integration is a dynamic process that changes as new capabilities are added, and software upgrades arrive for platforms within the air combat system.

“This is not about me being the best F/A-18F pilot I can be,” Braz explains. “It’s about me being a contributor to an ecosystem that is a vast team that generates effects chains across the battle space.” This mindset shift represents perhaps the most significant challenge facing modern air force training systems.

The F-35, with its advanced sensor fusion and networking capabilities, operates fundamentally differently from traditional fighters. Rather than individual aircraft engaging in classic dogfights, fifth-generation platforms function as nodes in a broader network, sharing sensor data and coordinating effects across multiple domains. This “wolf pack” mentality requires pilots to understand not just their own aircraft’s capabilities, but how those capabilities integrate with ground-based systems, maritime platforms, space assets, and increasingly, autonomous systems.

Australia’s experience illustrates the complex interdependencies that make scaling modern air combat training so challenging. Braz describes what he calls the “temporal discipline model.” This is a carefully structured progression where pilots spend three to four years developing both platform proficiency and ecosystem integration skills during their initial operational tour.

The challenge isn’t simply producing more pilots. “If I uplift the numbers of aircrew, they’ve got to fly more. They’ve got to have more technicians to help them fly more. They’ve got to have more sustainment and sparing,” Braz notes. The entire system must scale proportionally, or imbalances emerge that can compromise the training pipeline’s effectiveness.

This reality forces difficult choices. In a resource-constrained environment, adding more pilots without corresponding increases in flying hours and training capacity can actually reduce the quality of training each individual receives. The result is a delicate balancing act between quantity and quality that has no easy solutions.

The answer increasingly lies in sophisticated synthetic training environments. Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) training systems are becoming essential tools for providing the complex, networked training scenarios that fifth-generation operations require.

“Our integrated advanced training environment and synthetic training environment becomes really important,” Braz emphasizes. These systems allow pilots to practice the “really difficult reps and sets” required to master fifth-generation operations without the prohibitive costs and logistical challenges of live training exercises.

While the U.S. Air Force invests heavily in high-fidelity synthetic training environments, smaller air forces like Australia’s must find the right balance between capability and cost. The goal is to create systems that can integrate with allied training networks while remaining affordable for nations with more modest defense budgets.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of modern air combat training is the challenge posed by continuous software upgrades. Unlike previous generations of military aircraft, fifth-generation platforms are essentially flying computers that receive regular capability updates throughout their service lives.

This creates a persistent training challenge: pilots and maintainers must continuously adapt to evolving capabilities, and training systems must account for aircraft operating at different software block levels within the same unit. The F-35’s block upgrades, for instance, can significantly alter the aircraft’s capabilities, sensor performance, and weapons integration options.

Australia has developed an innovative approach to this challenge through its Air Warfare Instructors Course, a highly selective program that runs every two years. This intensive six-month course produces what Braz calls “force integrators”—officers who become experts in air power integration and serve as leaders for the next generation of aviators.

These instructors play a crucial role in bridging the gap between platform-specific training and ecosystem-wide thinking. They help junior pilots understand that mastering their individual aircraft is just the foundation for operating in a networked, multi-domain environment.

For nations like Australia, the integration challenge extends beyond air-to-air combat to encompass maritime operations. “Air is intrinsically maritime capable,” Braz argues, pushing back against the tendency to view air and naval capabilities as separate domains.

The F-35’s sensor capabilities, combined with platforms like the MQ-4 Triton, create intelligence and targeting capabilities that are “highly sought after by our Navy counterparts.” This integration becomes even more important as autonomous maritime systems proliferate, creating new opportunities for air-sea coordination.

The training challenges identified by Australia’s experience reflect broader issues facing air forces worldwide. The fundamental shift from platform-centric to network-centric operations requires new approaches to everything from initial pilot training to advanced tactical instruction.

The solution isn’t simply adopting new technology but rethinking the entire approach to air combat training. This transformation requires several key elements:

• Mindset transformation involves moving from individual excellence to ecosystem contribution. Pilots must understand their role as nodes in a larger network rather than independent operators.
• Synthetic integration leverages virtual environments for complex, networked training scenarios that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive to conduct live.
• Continuous adaptation builds training systems that can evolve with rapidly changing technology, ensuring pilots remain current with the latest capabilities.
• Cross-domain thinking prepares aviators for multi-domain operations from the beginning of their careers, breaking down traditional service boundaries.

Air Vice-Marshal Braz’s insights make clear that the transition to fifth-generation air combat represents more than a technological upgrade. It’s a fundamental reimagining of how air power operates, requiring training systems that can prepare pilots for networked, multi-domain environments.

The air forces that successfully navigate this transition will be those that embrace the complexity of ecosystem-wide training while finding practical, cost-effective solutions to the resource challenges it presents. Australia’s approach offers valuable lessons, but each nation must find its own path through this transformation.

The future of air combat training lies not in perfecting individual skills but in preparing for the complexities of twenty-first-century warfare.

Featured image: Air Commander Australia, Air Vice-Marshal Glen Braz, AM, CSC, DSM, leads the Air Force contingent during the 2025 Anzac Day Parade in Sydney, New South Wales. April 25, 2025. Credit: Australian Department of Defence.