Rheinmetall, Leonardo to build tanks in Italy

Germany and Italy are getting together to build tanks.

German arms company Rheinmetall and Italy’s Leonardo have announced a new 50-50 venture to build the new Panther KF51 Main Battle Tank to replace the Ariete tank in the Italian army. Not to be confused with the German Panzer tank from the Second World War, the new Panther KF51 tank is an upgraded model of the German Leopard 2A4 tank ,with a new turret and an autoloading 130 millimetre main gun.

The initial order for the tanks is worth more than €2 billion and regulatory approval for the new company is expected next year.

Sixty percent of the workshare will be in Italy and the new company called Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles, will also be building the Lynx Infantry Fighting Vehicle, for the Italian army’s plan to acquire a thousand vehicles, for its Armoured Infantry Combat System vehicles program. This will include Skyranger anti-aircraft, reconnaissance, anti-tank, recovery, engineer and bridge-laying versions of the vehicles.

Leonardo has an annual turnover of €15 billion with 50,000 employees and the Italian state is its largest shareholder.

Rheinmetall is Germany’s largest defence company with sales of €7.2 billion and 34,000 employees.

Separately, Croatia has signed on to buy up to 50 Leopard tanks to replace its M-84 tanks and M-80 infantry fighting vehicles, which it plans to transfer to Ukraine. This comes shortly after Lithuania also announced plans to buy an estimated 50 of these tanks.