By Robbin Laird
In 2025, four significant books emerged that collectively chronicle the transformation of airpower from its industrial-age roots to its current form as a networked, information-centric enterprise. These volumes, Training for The High-End Fight: The Paradigm Shift in Combat Pilot Training, Remembering the B-17 and Its Role in World War II, Italy and the F-35, and the second edition of My Fifth Generation Journey, together provide a comprehensive narrative arc that spans from the strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to the software-defined combat systems shaping contemporary warfare. What makes this collection particularly valuable is not simply its chronological sweep, but its demonstration of how the fundamental nature of airpower has evolved from platform-centric operations to integrated, coalition-enabled kill webs.
From Platform to Network: The Central Transformation
The most striking theme across these four books is the transition from viewing aircraft as individual combat platforms to understanding them as nodes within larger networks. This transformation represents nothing less than a revolution in how we conceive of airpower itself. The B-17 Flying Fortress, documented in Remembering the B-17, exemplified the industrial-age approach to air warfare. Success depended on building enough aircraft, training enough crews, and accepting devastating losses as the price of strategic effect. The bomber formations over Europe operated in coordinated patterns, but each aircraft remained fundamentally autonomous once airborne, its crew making decisions based on limited information and visual contact with the enemy.
Training for the High-End Fight captures the endpoint of this transformation, describing a combat environment where fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35 function as “information supercomputers” rather than merely improved fighters. The book’s central insight is that modern pilots must be “intellectual athletes” and “digital connectors” capable of managing vast flows of real-time data across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. This is not simply an upgrade in capability; it represents a categorical shift in what airpower means. Where the B-17 crew focused on navigation, bomb delivery, and defensive gunnery, today’s F-35 pilot operates as a collaborative manager of network power, processing information from sensors distributed across the battlespace and coordinating strikes executed by platforms they may never see.
The book on Italy’s F-35 program reinforces this networked perspective by demonstrating how a mid-tier power leveraged the Lightning II to transform itself into a global force multiplier. Italy’s approach, building the Cameri facility as a strategic nerve center for F-35 production and sustainment, shows understanding that influence in modern airpower derives not from platform count but from position within the international defense network. By making itself indispensable to F-35 operations across Europe and beyond, Italy achieved strategic weight disproportionate to its traditional military ranking.
The Cognitive Revolution in Pilot Training
Training for the High-End Fight makes perhaps its most important contribution in documenting what it terms the “cognitive revolution” in pilot preparation. The book argues forcefully that yesterday’s training paradigms are not merely outdated but actively detrimental to developing the mental agility required for modern combat. Traditional training emphasized mastery of aircraft systems and tactical procedures, essentially preparing pilots to execute known solutions to anticipated problems. The high-end fight demands something entirely different: the ability to thrive amid ambiguity, rapidly shifting circumstances, and scenarios requiring creative, on-the-fly problem solving.
This cognitive shift finds its practical expression in the “live-virtual-constructive” training ecosystem pioneered at facilities like Italy’s International Flight Training School. By blurring the boundaries between actual flight and advanced simulation, these systems expose trainees to the intensity and complexity of true combat—complete with electronic warfare, joint operations, and adaptive adversaries—without the expense and risk of live exercises. More importantly, instructors can inject constant friction, forcing pilots to develop adaptive thinking rather than procedural response.
The second edition of My Fifth Generation Journey reinforces this point through its documentation of how F-35 pilots discovered that the aircraft demanded fundamentally different cognitive approaches than legacy fighters. As one section notes, the F-35 represents a “software-upgradeable aircraft” designed for continuous evolution rather than periodic major upgrades. This means pilots must develop not just proficiency with current systems, but the intellectual flexibility to rapidly assimilate new capabilities as they emerge through software updates. The traditional model of mastering a static weapons system has given way to permanent learning and adaptation.
Kill Chains to Kill Webs: The Operational Paradigm
The evolution from “kill chains” to “kill webs” provides the operational framework that unites these books. The kill chain concept — identify, fix, track, target, engage, assess — emerged from the Cold War emphasis on linear processes and centralized control. It worked well enough when the pace of conflict allowed sequential decision-making and adversaries lacked sophisticated sensors and weapons. Training for the High-End Fight documents why this approach has become obsolete. Modern adversaries operate with machine-speed sensor and weapons systems. Single points of failure, inherent in linear kill chains, have become fatal liabilities.
Kill webs represent the alternative: flexible, distributed networks where every sensor, shooter, and platform plays overlapping roles. No single node’s failure breaks the system. Information flows omni-directionally, allowing the fastest decision-maker to coordinate strikes regardless of formal command hierarchy. This operational approach demands the cognitive agility and networked thinking that the training revolution seeks to develop.
Italy’s F-35 program demonstrates kill web concepts in practice through what Lt. General Pasquale Preziosa termed the “double transition”, simultaneously modernizing legacy platforms like the Eurofighter Typhoon while pioneering F-35 integration. This creates a fully networked air force where KC-767A tankers, E-550 CAEW command aircraft, Typhoons, and Lightning IIs form a coherent system rather than a collection of platforms. Each element extends the others’ capabilities through shared situational awareness and distributed decision-making.
The Historical Mirror: Lessons from the B-17
Remembering the B-17 and Its Role in World War II might seem the outlier in this collection, a historical work among studies of contemporary transformation. Yet it serves crucial purposes in the overall narrative. First, it provides the baseline against which we measure transformation. The industrial-age airpower represented by the Flying Fortress, mass production, accepted attrition, linear tactics, stands in sharp contrast to today’s network-centric, information-dominant approach. Understanding what has changed requires knowing where we started.
Second, the B-17 story illuminates timeless challenges in military aviation. The book’s examination of procurement decisions, crew training imperatives, and the balance between cost and capability resonates directly with current defense debates. How do you build the right aircraft? How do you train crews fast enough? How do you maintain readiness while managing resources? These questions haunted Pentagon planners in 1943 and remain central to defense strategy today. The context changes, but the fundamental tensions persist.
Third, the book’s focus on Franco-American bonds forged through shared sacrifice during World War II provides essential context for understanding coalition operations today. The modern emphasis on coalition readiness documented in Training for the High-End Fight, where allies train together from the outset, forging common mental frameworks and tactical habits, has deep roots in relationships built during earlier conflicts. The ceremonies on Noirmoutier Island honoring B-17 crews seventy years after their crash demonstrate how historical memory sustains alliance relationships that underpin contemporary coalition airpower.
Italy as Case Study: Strategic Transformation Through Airpower
Italy and the F-35 serves as the detailed case study demonstrating how a nation can leverage airpower transformation to elevate its strategic position. Italy’s approach offers several instructive elements.
First, the Cameri facility represents strategic thinking about manufacturing as power projection. By positioning itself as the European hub for F-35 production and sustainment, Italy ensured its voice carries weight in program decisions affecting dozens of partner nations. This is influence through indispensability rather than traditional military mass.
Second, the integration of F-35B fighters aboard the carrier Cavour demonstrates how new capabilities enable new strategic options. Italy’s expeditionary strike capability extends its influence into contested waters worldwide, transforming its role from regional Mediterranean player to global naval power. The book documents how Italian carrier strike groups have deployed to the Pacific, participating in exercises that demonstrate interoperability with partners from Japan to Australia.
Third, Italy’s “double transition” strategy shows sophisticated understanding of the relationship between legacy and advanced systems. Rather than viewing Typhoon modernization and F-35 integration as competing priorities, Italy treats them as complementary elements of a networked force. The Typhoon provides sensor coverage and weapons capacity that extends F-35 effectiveness, while the Lightning II’s information dominance amplifies legacy platform capabilities. This integrated approach creates combat power exceeding the sum of individual platforms.
The Continuous Evolution Model
My Fifth Generation Journey introduces a concept with profound implications: the software-defined aircraft designed for continuous evolution. Traditional fighters received periodic major upgrades, perhaps three or four major capability blocks over a thirty-year service life. The F-35 represents something fundamentally different: a platform that “never will be truly finished.” Each software block delivers combat-ready additive capabilities without the extensive redesign and testing required for legacy upgrades.
This model transforms the relationship between operators and developers. Instead of defining requirements, developing solutions, and fielding static systems, the process becomes iterative and responsive. Frontline operators identify capability gaps; software developers create solutions; new capabilities flow to the fleet within months rather than years. Training for the High-End Fight documents how training programs have adopted similar continuous adaptation models, updating curricula based on operational lessons rather than waiting for scheduled reviews.
The continuous evolution model also creates new dependencies and vulnerabilities. Software-defined systems require robust cybersecurity, resilient data links, and stable international cooperation to maintain upgrade pipelines. These requirements explain the emphasis throughout these books on coalition integration. The F-35 global enterprise depends on partner nations maintaining compatible systems, training standards, and security protocols. National decisions to modify or restrict systems can disrupt the collective capability.
Man-Machine Teaming: The Next Frontier
Several of these books point toward the next transformation: the evolution from piloted aircraft to man-machine teams where manned fighters command autonomous systems. My Fifth Generation Journey explicitly discusses plans for F-35s to serve as command nodes for “man-robotic wolf packs,” directing swarms of sensors, weapons, and support platforms. This concept bridges current fifth-generation operations and emerging sixth-generation approaches.
Training for the High-End Fight implicitly prepares for this future through its emphasis on cognitive development and decision-making under uncertainty. Managing autonomous systems in contested environments will demand the same mental agility, rapid assessment, and adaptive thinking required for modern kill web operations. The pilot’s role continues shifting from direct platform control toward information management and decision coordination, a trajectory that could eventually lead to manned aircraft becoming mobile command centers for largely autonomous forces.
This evolution raises questions these books acknowledge but do not fully resolve. What cognitive skills must pilots develop to effectively command autonomous wingmen? How do training systems prepare humans for delegation of lethal decision-making to machines? What new vulnerabilities emerge when combat effectiveness depends on maintaining network connections between manned controllers and unmanned systems? The 2025 books document transformation in progress, not transformation complete.
Coalition as Imperative, Not Option
Perhaps the most consistent theme across these four volumes is the centrality of coalition operations to modern airpower. This represents a fundamental shift from earlier eras when coalition warfare was viewed as a complicating factor, something that reduced efficiency through the need to coordinate different systems, procedures, and languages. Today’s approach, documented throughout Training for the High-End Fight and the Italy book, treats coalition integration as the baseline assumption.
Training together from initial qualification rather than attempting interoperability later creates shared mental models and tactical habits. When Italian F-35 pilots deploy to exercises in Australia or Norwegian Lightning IIs train with American squadrons, they operate with pre-established procedures and common understanding developed through joint training. This is not cobbled-together cooperation under crisis but designed-in interoperability from the beginning.
The strategic logic is compelling. No single nation can maintain the full spectrum of capabilities required for high-end conflict across all domains. By specializing and integrating, coalition partners achieve collective capability exceeding what any member could field independently. Italy’s Cameri facility, Norway’s Arctic expertise, Australia’s Pacific presence, and American force projection create an integrated system more powerful than its components. This makes coalition not merely politically desirable but operationally necessary.
Conclusion: Adaptation as Strategy
These four books, read together, reveal airpower transformation as an ongoing process rather than a completed revolution. From the B-17’s industrial-age mass to the F-35’s networked information dominance represents not the end of evolution but rather one particularly dramatic phase. The continuous adaptation model documented in My Fifth Generation Journey, the cognitive development emphasized in Training for the High-End Fight, and the coalition integration demonstrated in the Italy book all point toward a future where competitive advantage derives from the speed of adaptation rather than static capability advantages.
The most valuable weapon, as Training for the High-End Fight insists, is not the airframe but the mind in the cockpit and the coalition of nations willing to continuously reinvent how they develop, train, and employ airpower. This demands institutional cultures comfortable with perpetual change, training systems that prioritize cognitive agility over procedural mastery, and international partnerships resilient enough to sustain cooperation through technological and operational turbulence.
The B-17 story reminds us that transformation always builds on accumulated experience and sustained relationships. Italy’s strategic positioning demonstrates that smart thinking can multiply influence beyond raw capability counts. The F-35 global enterprise proves that software-defined, continuously evolving systems can deliver unprecedented operational flexibility when backed by international cooperation. The training revolution shows that cognitive development and mental agility have become as crucial as aircraft performance.
Together, these 2025 books document how airpower has evolved from industrial production of autonomous platforms into a sophisticated international enterprise where networked information dominance, coalition integration, and continuous adaptation define competitive advantage.
The evolution continues, but its trajectory is clear: success belongs to those who adapt fastest, think most clearly under pressure, and build partnerships that multiply individual national capabilities into collective power.
In this transformation, the questions that matter are not about which aircraft to build, but about how to develop the minds that will employ them and the coalitions that will sustain them.
Training for the High-End Fight: The Paradigm Shift for Combat Pilot Training
Remembering the B-17 and its Role in World War II: Noirmoutier Island, France, 2013
This book contains both an Italian and English text.
Italy and the F-35: Shaping 21st Century Coalition-Enabled Airpower
Next is the Italian translation of Training for the High-End Fight.