Leopard 2 to the Army, that’s why Italy should aim for a G2G agreement with Germany
Leopard 2? Ok, but Germany buys us Samp/T, AW-249 and Centauro. The comment by Pietro Batacchi, director of Rid
The intention of the Italian Army and Defense to purchase the Leopard 2 A7/A8 tanks from Germany and Krauss Maffei Wegmann is now well known.
THE ITALIAN ARMY TOWARDS THE PURCHASE OF LEOPARD 2 TANKS
For the first time, General Pietro Serino, Chief of EMS, had spoken about it to RID in an exclusive interview . The operation, we understand, is going ahead. As Rid's readers and all the people who assiduously follow us know, we have criticized this intention, for various reasons which, however, we do not want to repeat and re/list now.
THE ITALIAN DEFENSE IS THEN POINTING TO A G2G AGREEMENT WITH GERMANY
We rather want to make a different reasoning. Want to buy Leopard 2? Well, but then a wide-ranging G2G agreement is made with Germany in which the Germans undertake to appear in Italy the Samp/T, instead of the American Patriot, the AW-249, given the problems of the Tiger and the unwillingness to upgrade the helicopter to the Mk3 standard, and, why not, the Centauro 2, which would be very convenient for the German Army, otherwise too unbalanced "up" in terms of weights (PUMA, BOXER).
THE IMPACTS FOR THE ITALIAN DEFENSE INDUSTRY
Under these conditions, the operation would certainly be advantageous for Italy as well, above all from an industrial point of view. In fact, don't tell me that the licensed assembly of the Leopard 2 in Italy would be the convenient counterpart for our Defense sector (which, we never tire of repeating it, today constitutes the advanced vertex of our manufacturing, the second in Europe): we need more and better. We therefore turn to the Italian Defense which we ask to open an all-out table with Germany, inspired by a healthy, and we believe acceptable, principle: do ut des.
Article published on rid.it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/leopard-2-allesercito-ecco-perche-litalia-dovrebbe-puntare-a-un-accordo-g2g-con-la-germania/ on Sun, 21 May 2023 05:24:03 +0000.