How high-tech made in Venegono gives future pilots wings

10 July 2024

The docuseries “Piloti Caccia - International Flight Training School”, first aired on Rai 2 and available on RaiPlay, recounts the training of military pilots at the International Flight Training School in Decimomannu (Cagliari, Italy). Behind the academy, the technologies developed by Leonardo in Venegono (Varese, Italy), are described in Sandro Neri's article in QN - Quotidiano Nazionale.

In the International Flight Training School (IFTS), born from the collaboration between Leonardo and the Italian Air Force, future pilots are trained on board the M-346 fleet and through the most advanced hi-tech simulators. Ground and airborne activities complement each other, with the real and the virtual merging to create a common training scenario.

Combining traditional “live” training systems with the new Virtual & Constructive simulation, trainees on the ground, on simulators, and pilots in flight are involved in a shared mission, supervised by a ground instructor who determines its complexity level through the introduction of “friendly” and “hostile” elements.

This approach is enabled by the innovative technologies developed by Leonardo in Venegono, where digitalisation represents a competence accelerator. The new training frontier - advanced, virtual and immersive - is based on high computing power and a huge amount of data to be generated, analysed and utilised thanks to the capabilities of the davinci-1 supercomputer.