Italy’s Leonardo and Germany’s Rheinmetall have secured, through their 50-50 joint venture, two contracts with the Italian Army worth 3.7 billion euros in total, about 4.16 billion dollars, Italy’s MF newspaper reported on Thursday, in a dispatch carried by Reuters. The orders cover A2CS combat vehicles and new generation main battle tanks and form part of Italy’s wider military modernisation programme.
Neither company confirmed the signing. Rheinmetall declined to comment, and Leonardo chief executive Lorenzo Mariani said he could not confirm whether a contract had been signed because any communication must be coordinated with the client. Mariani, speaking in Rome, said the programme is ready to enter production and that work is progressing on both the tank programme and the Future Combat System in close cooperation with Rheinmetall.
The venture, Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles, was launched in 2024 to give Italy a domestic armoured vehicle champion built on Rheinmetall platforms with Italian systems. A production order of this size would be its first at scale and would replace an ageing Italian fleet, with export potential Mariani cited alongside domestic modernisation.
Readers should treat the value and the signing itself as reported, not confirmed. Until the Italian Army or the companies publish the contracts, the 3.7 billion euros rests on one newspaper’s reporting, however consistent the follow on coverage has been.