The Italian Air Force Makes Its Case for Jet Ab Initio Training and the M-345 That Flew Cruise Missile Profiles at a NATO Exercise

The Italian Air Force has taken delivery of all 18 of its ordered Leonardo M-345 light jet trainers, and the fleet has now surpassed 2,000 flight hours. Using that milestone, the service is arguing that student pilots should train on a jet - not a turboprop - from the very first phase of flight training, because a jet better prepares them for the demands of next-generation fighters. The argument gained weight after an M-345 flew in an aggressor role at a NATO exercise, emulating the flight profile of a cruise missile.

What Did the Italian Air Force Announce?

According to reporting from The Aviationist, the Italian Air Force has received the full order of 18 Leonardo M-345 aircraft, and the fleet has crossed 2,000 flight hours. The M-345 is a light jet trainer built by Leonardo, the Italian aerospace company.

The service is using this concrete milestone to push a broader position: that the aircraft a student learns on fundamentally shapes the pilot they become - and that the right teacher, in their view, is a jet from day one.

What Does “Ab Initio” Training Mean?

Ab initio is Latin for “from the beginning.” In military pilot training, it refers to the earliest phase - when a student arrives with no military flying background and leaves with their wings.

The long-running question across the world’s air forces is simple: what should a student fly during that first phase, a turboprop or a jet? For decades, the answer skewed toward turboprops, and for a straightforward reason - cost.

Why Have Air Forces Traditionally Used Turboprops?

Turboprops are cheaper to buy, cheaper to fuel, and cheaper to maintain. A turboprop trainer can teach the fundamentals of airmanship at a fraction of the operating cost of a jet.

That economics argument is real, and it is why the turboprop became the workhorse of basic military flight training across much of the world. The money saved on cheaper training hours can be redirected toward more flight time, better simulators, or other capabilities.

Why Does the Italian Air Force Want a Jet From Day One?

The Italian case is that the M-345 offers capabilities a turboprop simply cannot match - and that those capabilities matter more than ever given what the next generation of fighters will demand from the pilot.

The difference isn’t only speed. It’s energy state. A jet accelerates and decelerates differently, and it lacks the immediate throttle response of a propeller biting into the air. Turbine engines have spool time - a delay between pushing the power up and the thrust arriving. Learning to fly ahead of that delay is a skill built over time, and a student who learns energy management in a jet from the start is learning the actual rhythm of the airplane they’ll fly operationally.

There’s also the flight environment. A jet trainer flies higher and faster, exposing students earlier to the systems and procedures of high-performance flight - pressurization, oxygen, and speeds where turns are managed in terms of G loading rather than gentle bank angles. The Italian argument is that meeting that world sooner makes the eventual transition to a frontline fighter a shorter, safer leap.

How Did the M-345 Fly Cruise Missile Profiles?

Here is the detail that moves the M-345 beyond the classroom. The Italian Air Force has already used the trainer in an aggressor role during a NATO exercise, where it flew profiles emulating cruise missiles so that air defenders and interceptors could practice against a realistic threat.

To credibly imitate a cruise missile, an aircraft has to fly a specific, demanding profile: low, fast, and on a predictable but challenging track that gives the defending side a genuine problem to solve. A turboprop cannot present that picture the same way.

The takeaway is about performance margin. The fact that the Italian Air Force can pull a basic trainer off the flight line and hand it a role in a NATO air defense exercise signals that the aircraft has capability well beyond pattern work and aerobatics.

Is Jet Training Actually Better? The Honest Answer

It’s worth being clear about what is fact and what is argument. The claim that jet ab initio training produces measurably better fighter pilots than the turboprop pathway is the Italian Air Force’s position - an argument, not a settled fact.

Plenty of capable air forces, including some of the most respected fighter communities in the world, still run early training on turboprops and produce outstanding aviators. The counterargument is straightforward: jet training costs dramatically more per hour, and if a turboprop can teach the fundamentals well enough, the savings can fund more flight hours or better simulators. This debate is live, and reasonable professionals land on different sides of it.

Why Does This Matter for Pilots?

What makes the timing notable is that the Italians are tying their argument specifically to the next generation of fighters. Future fighter aviation is heading toward sensor fusion - combining radar, infrared, and electronic data into a single picture - and toward pilots who may act as a quarterback for uncrewed “loyal wingman” drones flying alongside them.

In those cockpits, the challenge isn’t muscling the airplane around the sky; it’s managing an enormous flow of information under time pressure. The Italian case is that you want to build that high-workload comfort from the very first sortie, in an aircraft that already feels like a jet.

For anyone weighing a path toward military aviation, this matters because the training pipeline you enter shapes the timeline and cost structure of your journey - and different air forces are betting differently on how to build you. More broadly, military trainer development has a long history of trickling into the civilian and light jet world, so the training philosophies proven on aircraft like the M-345 tend to inform how the wider industry thinks about instruction.

Key Takeaways

• The Italian Air Force has received all 18 of its ordered Leonardo M-345 light jet trainers, and the fleet has passed 2,000 flight hours.
• The service is arguing for jet ab initio training - flying a jet from the earliest phase - instead of the traditional, cheaper turboprop path.
• Jets teach energy management and spool-time awareness and expose students to high-performance flight environments sooner.
• An M-345 flew an aggressor role at a NATO exercise, emulating a cruise missile, demonstrating performance well beyond basic training tasks.
• The claim that jet training produces better pilots is the Italian Air Force’s position, not a settled fact - many top air forces still train on turboprops.