foto: redakce/Leopard 2A8 at Eurosatory 2024
Italian company Leonardo has ended its cooperation with KNDS and plans to build a new Italian main battle tank on the KF51 Panther platform from Rheinmetall. It may thus facilitate to some extent the Czech acquisition of the Leopard 2A8.
Leonardo wants to offer the Italian army the "Italian Panther"
Leonardo expects to set up a joint venture with Rheinmetall by September to produce a new tank for the Italian army, based on the KF51 Panther tank developed by the German company and unveiled at Eurosatory in 2022. It also plans to sign a contract with the Italian Ministry of Defence to supply the successor to the existing Ariete tank to the Italian armed forces by the end of 2024, within a maximum timeframe of 36 months. "Once the joint venture is launched, we will be ready to respond to the first requirements of the armed forces," said Leonardo CEO Roberto Cingolani.
"The joint venture in the initial phase is related to their needs, but the ambition is to develop technologies that are best for the European main battle tank, for European needs, kind of in the idea of a European defence space where there must be competing giants not only in the domestic market but globally. The numbers are big, we are talking about tens of billions (euros) for the European main battle tank, whoever can be at the top will gain access to huge markets. Fifteen months ago the La Spezia plant was to be sold, today we want to put it at the top of Europe," Cingolani stressed, reiterating that the venture between Leonardo and Rheinmetall "will be a real industrial synergy".
"The technologies we will develop with Rheinmetall on a new tank for the Italian army could be very competitive for a future European main battle tank, but it's not a closed game, we can look at other alliances, KNDS or other operators in the extended main battle tank perspective could certainly enter the wider European programme, Leonardo is absolutely open," Cingolani added, referring to the suspended negotiations with the Franco-German consortium KNDS to build a new tank for the Italian army in a joint venture with the German Rheinmetall group.
Leonardo's cooperation with KNDS "fizzled out"
"In 2023 we signed a letter of intent with KNDS. Its purpose was to explore the possibility of collaborating on a new main battle tank to see what the industrial synergies could be. Leonardo is a multinational company that exports 85 % of its products abroad, so we are interested in international joint ventures, but after five months of technical team meetings, we could not find a consensus on the industrial strategy because Leonardo was not interested in continuing the alliance, so the letter of intent fizzled out. Technically, the KNDS offering was based on the Leopard 2A8 platform with minor changes. Leonardo's technologies would be integrated in five or six years, but everything had to be studied, the industrial strategy was not sufficient," explained the Italian company's CEO.
Italy, like other NATO countries, needs to modernise its tank army. Last summer, there were reports of interest not only in upgrading existing Ariete tanks, but in acquiring up to 133 Leopard 2A8 tanks. Such a significant order had the potential to raise some nervousness, including in the Czech Republic. Apart from the long-term advantage of expanding the range of users of the Leopard 2 tanks (which are not in the Italian army's equipment today), which remain the main tank of NATO's European armies, it would have meant the threat of a "longer queue" and a possible complication for the implementation of the Czech part of the joint purchase of Leopard 2A8s in the form of up to 77 units in six modifications. The Bundeswehr is to receive 105 of them.
Czech acquisition of 2A8 Leopards: standardization and long-term industrial cooperation
As the statements of Leonardo's CEO between the lines show, the stumbling block between the Italian company and the manufacturer of the 2A8 Leopards, KNDS Deutschland (formerly KMW), was the Italian interest in implementing the most of existing and developing Italian technology in the vehicles. The philosophy of the joint purchase, in which the Czech Republic is also interested in participating, is, among other things, a certain high degree of standardisation - the Czech Leopards 2A8 will have Czech communication systems and Czech camouflage, but otherwise they will be identical in virtually every respect to tanks not only of the German Bundeswehr. This means that they can be procured under the same conditions, and it also opens up possibilities for future industrial cooperation.
Thomas Fritzsch, Sales Director of KNDS Deutschland, spoke about its principles with the editors of Security Magazine at Eurosatory 2024. It is to be a long-term cooperation, which will not be limited in time by the "assembly" of a limited number of tanks for the Czech Army, but by sharing production technology across European users. Ongoing negotiations on industrial cooperation will give Czech companies the opportunity to participate in the production of various systems for the Leopard 2A8 (and its future variants) not only for the Czech Army, but for the armed forces of other countries.
Together with the opportunities this will bring in the field of tank life cycle maintenance, this is a model of industrial cooperation that goes beyond the current approach: "We are building a European network. Czech industry is a key part of it, and that's because the Czech Republic is one of the first countries to join. We are negotiating both with industry and with the Industrial Cooperation Section of the Ministry of Defence. We are working closely and positively with both parties, and we believe that we will reach very good results very, very soon," Thomas Fritzsch told Security Magazine.
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