As expected, the Italian Leopard 1s depart from Lenta for Ukraine, but …
In April 2022, a year ago , we wrote that, sooner or later, they would go knocking on one of the largest old tank depots in Europe, in Lenta (VC), to take our old tanks and send them to Ukraine. At the time, Rheinmetall was in discussion to send 88 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine and, curiously, these should have been prepared by the Italian branch of the German company which had great experience in the matter, also because this type of tank had long been the mainstay backbone of our armored forces.
Now we learn that what we predicted would happen last year is not only happening, but it doesn't even bring particular benefits to Italian industry and industrial employment. As reported by press sources , the managing director of Rheinmetall, the German company operating in the armaments sector, confirmed that 96 tanks that will be reconditioned in Germany and then sold to Ukraine are of Italian origin.
So we silently sold a few old tanks, but not very old ones, which, among other things, won't even be reconditioned in Italy and therefore won't even create a minimum job. We say old, but not very old, because among these tanks there were the standard A5 ones, revised in the nineties and equipped with new turret and hull protections, applied for its use in peace missions in the former Yugoslavia, the last mission of the medium.
Among other things, we learn that the vehicles were not even purchased directly from Rheinmetall, but would have passed through an intermediary, the Swiss RUAG, in 2016 which then turned them over to Rheinmetall. We would have to ask ourselves, in this case, if, and why, the vehicles were still kept in the former base of the Cavalleggeri di Lodi in Lenta.
As we told you at the time, Lenta had the reputation of being the largest armored vehicle depot in the world, given that it contained practically all the vehicles that Italy used when the army was conscripted and therefore large. There are hundreds of M 113 vehicles, Centauro 1 vehicles, dozens of SIDAM 25 anti-aircraft vehicles, M 109 155 mm vehicles (American vehicles from the 60s and 70s) as well as other armored vehicles of various versions and specializations.
The SIDAM, an M113 with a turret with 4 x 25mm cannons, too light for attack helicopters, but usable for drones.
It would be curious, if not worrying, if, at this point, some arms dealer thought of equipping the Ukrainian army at the expense of the Italian taxpayer and filling his own wallet, without practically anyone knowing anything about it, without any involvement of our industry . Such a decision should be purely political, with a lot of accountability, and not made to please this or that foreign arms company.
Here is a video to better understand what the Lenta depot is, where a tank was on sale for 30,000 euros, only to be resold to Ukraine for a million..
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The article As expected, the Italian Leopard 1s depart from Lenta for Ukraine, but … it comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/come-prevedibile-i-leopard-1-italiani-partono-da-lenta-per-lucraina-ma/ on Tue, 04 Apr 2023 10:31:55 +0000.