According to a senior official at the Italian company Leonardo, Italy will equip the German Leopard tanks it is purchasing with Italian-made parts, potentially even the gun barrel.
As land warfare becomes more prominent due to the conflict in Ukraine, Italy has agreed to purchase the tanks to cover a capability gap. The Leopards will be assembled at a Leonardo assembly line located in La Spezia, Italy.
In order to meet Italian requirements and give Italy an industrial and managerial role, there will be a significant "Italianization" of the Leopard 2 tank under a Letter of Intent signed in December with KNDS, according to Lorenzo Mariani, co-director general of Leonardo.
According to him, this indicates that the command-and-control system, software-defined radio, gun barrel, and electro-optical sensor provided by Leonardo are all being evaluated.
Included in the Letter of Intent is the collaboration between Leonardo and KNDS, which was revealed in December, to manage Italy's Leopard purchase of slightly more than 130 Leopard 2 A8 combat variant tanks.
Mariani added that he anticipated Rheinmetall of Germany and Iveco of Italy being involved in the program in some capacity.
The agreement with KNDS also covers Italy's inclusion in the European Main Ground Combat System (MGCS), a future tank that Germany and France are planning, as well as an Italian program worth €5 billion ($5.4 billion), renamed A2CS after it was once known as AICS, that aims to manufacture up to 1,000 infantry combat vehicles.
The Italian army has created a list of requirements, and Mariani predicted that the country's procurement office would ask for an offer for a feasibility study shortly.
