This is the latest in a series of semi-regular columns by Robbin Laird, where he will tackle current defense issues through the lens of more than 45 years of defense expertise in both the US and abroad. The goal of these columns: to look back at how questions and perspectives of the past should inform decisions being made today.
Rear Adm. Max “Pepper” McCoy, the Chief of Naval Air Training, describes the system he runs as a factory conveyor belt: the test of whether it is working is whether it flows smoothly, without pools forming anywhere along the line.
And right now, by his own account, pools are forming in several places at once, and the Navy is running triage and modernization at the same time.
I sat down with McCoy, who commands the Naval Air Training Command (CNATRA), on August 10, 2026 to talk through what it takes to fix a training pipeline from the inside while operational demands on the aviators coming out the other end keep escalating. McCoy and I go back to the F-35 community’s stand-up and his time commanding Carrier Strike Group Four, so the conversation ran less like a briefing than an admiral thinking out loud about a training system that must be sustainable and repeatable to deliver combat-ready naval aviators.
