On this occurrence the CEO of Leonardo S.p.A., Alessandro Profumo, and the then Italian Air Force Chief of Staff, the General Enzo Vecciarelli, signed the collaboration agreement that gave birth to the IFTS.
[5][6][7] The School is currently based at Lecce-Galatina Air Base (Puglia), which is also used by the ItAF's 61st Wing that also operate Aermacchi MB.339 basic-advanced jet trainers that will be replaced, starting during 2021, by the new Aermacchi M-345 single engine jet trainer.
[10] The IFTS School offers customised training modules, tailored to the proficiency and output standard required each time by the air forces’ specific needs and syllabus and that are made in such a way to minimize the time a student has to spend at the Operational Conversion Unit (OCU).
[12][13] The flight training is carried out with the 22 Aermacchi M-346 Master high-performance advanced training aircraft, built by Leonardo S.p.A. and put at the School's disposal (18 belonging to the Italian Air Force and 4 directly delivered by Leonardo to the IFTS, last one delivered at the end of October 2019).
Exploiting LVC technology by Leonardo, students on-board of real aircraft (Live) can interact with pilots in the simulators (Virtual) and Computer Generated Forces (Constructive) within the same training mission.