If you wanted to draw a quiet line on a world map showing where Leonardo’s jet trainer business is winning, you would now need to extend it across the Atlantic. On 26 May 2026, at the company’s Venegono plant north of Milan, ITPS Canada signed for six M-346T Block 20s — Leonardo’s newest advanced jet trainer variant — with options for six more. The contract value was, in the discreet Italian manner, not disclosed.

This is not a NATO bulk-buy. ITPS — the International Test Pilot School — is a civilian institution based in North Bay, Ontario, that trains test pilots and is now expanding to support tactical fighter training under a planned International Tactical Training Centre (ITTC). The customer profile matters: when a civilian operator selects the M-346T for tactical-level training, that is a market signal that the Italian product is reaching beyond traditional government customers.

It is also, in the wider picture, another quiet win for Leonardo at a moment when the trainer market is genuinely up for grabs. Boeing’s much-touted T-7A Red Hawk remains years from full production. Korea’s T-50 is competitive but politically constrained. The M-346, three decades after its Yakovlev-Aermacchi origins, is approaching the rare status of a default choice.

What the Block 20 Actually Is

The M-346 has, since its 2004 first flight, been steadily evolved. The original was already a competent twin-engine advanced trainer with carefree handling, full glass cockpit, and embedded simulation. The Block 20 is the answer to a question Leonardo started asking around 2020: what if the trainer cockpit looked like an F-35 cockpit?

The answer involves a full cockpit refresh. Out go the six legacy multi-function displays. In come two Large Area Displays — one per seat — that mirror, in form factor and information density, the panoramic cockpit displays of the F-35 Lightning II and the next-generation European fighters. A low-profile head-up display sits above each LAD. The avionics architecture is updated to support more aggressive embedded virtual training: red-air threats, simulated weapons effects, electronic warfare scenarios — all generated in software, displayed as if they were real, and indistinguishable to the student in the front seat.

The doctrinal logic is straightforward. Fifth-generation fighters are expensive to fly, and increasingly precious in terms of operational fleet hours. The role of the advanced trainer is to do as much of the syllabus as possible on the cheaper airframe — including elements that previously required actual fighter time. The Block 20 is Leonardo’s answer to that requirement.

A Cousin, Not a Twin: The Yakovlev Origin Story

For anyone watching the trainer wars without context, the M-346 carries a piece of Cold War genealogy that is sometimes glossed over: it began life as a joint Russian-Italian project. In the early 1990s, Yakovlev and Aermacchi co-developed what was then called the Yak/AEM-130. The Russian airframe became the Yak-130; the Italian airframe diverged, picked up Western engines (Honeywell F124 turbofans), Western avionics, and Western certification, and emerged as the M-346 Master.

The cousins look superficially similar — high-mounted wings, twin engines, tandem cockpit — but their lineages diverged completely. The Yak-130 serves Russia, Belarus, Algeria, and a handful of other operators. The M-346 has gone to Italy, Israel, Singapore, Poland, Greece, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Qatar, and now — by way of Canada — into the Western civilian tactical training ecosystem. The same blueprint, two different Cold War endings.

The Wider Trainer Market: Leonardo Is Winning the Decade

The advanced trainer market, traditionally a quiet corner of the defence industry, is undergoing a generational refresh. The T-38 Talon — backbone of US Air Force pilot training for six decades — is being retired. Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk was meant to take over, but the programme has been plagued by escape-system, software, and structural issues, with full-rate production still some way off. Korea’s T-50 Golden Eagle, originally a Lockheed-Martin partnership, is solid but politically tied to Seoul. Turkey’s Hürjet is promising but unproven.

Into that vacuum, Leonardo has been quietly winning. Nigeria recently ordered the M-346FA (the fighter-attack variant). Greece, Poland, Israel are all operating the type. The new International Flight Training School at Decimomannu in Sardinia — a joint Italian Air Force and Leonardo venture — has become Europe’s default training pipeline for fifth-gen pilots, drawing students from Singapore, Germany, Japan, Qatar, and others.

The ITPS deal extends that ecosystem into North America. Six airframes is not a fleet — it is a foothold. But footholds in Ontario tend to have a way of becoming production lines, and Leonardo’s long game has clearly been to position the M-346 as the trainer the Royal Canadian Air Force itself might one day buy when the CT-155 Hawk reaches the end of its life. Ottawa has been watching. Ottawa is now, presumably, watching more closely. Vive l’Italia industrielle.

Sources: The Aviationist, Leonardo press release, Defense News, FlightGlobal, AeroMorning, Janes.