The Italian parliaments defense committee gave a thumbs-up to a big-time military upgrade plan worth 8.2 billion euros (which is about $8.86B) thatʼll bring next-gen tanks to their army
The program thats part of Giorgia Meloniʼs government push for stronger defense will run from early-25 to late-38. Right now theyʼve got 5.4B euros locked-in but still need to figure out where the other 2.7B will come from
A brand-new team-up between Leonardo and Rheinmetall (they just started working together few months back) is gonna be the main player in this project; their joint-venture LRM will focus on making new main battle tanks. These tanks will use the Panther KF51 design as their starting point - its gonna replace the old-school Ariete tanks from the 90s that arent doing so hot anymore (only about quarter of the 200 tanks they have actually work right now)
The whole thing makes sense with all the stuff going on in Europe: NATO needs its members to step up their game. The plan focuses on what they call “heavy component platforms“ which is fancy-talk for serious battle equipment