- A letter of intent was signed by both companies on 16 December to build a mobile howitzer steered toward the Italian Army as the service looks to modernise its fleet
- The platform will leverage the Artillery Gun Module and protected wheeled vehicle platform
- GlobalData indicates that Europe makes up the lion’s share of the global military land vehicles market over the next ten years
Chief executives from European defence contractors, Germany’s KNDS and Italy’s Leonardo, signed a letter of intent on 16 December to build a mobile artillery platform intended to fill a gap in the Italian Army fleet.
The two will marry KNDS’ Artillery Gun Module (AGM), a 155mm L52 howitzer system, with Leonardo’s new protected wheeled vehicle platform.
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Both companies claim that industrial cooperation will continue in the future to overcome supply chain issues and time to market. This trend correlates with GlobalData’s analysis of the global military land vehicles market in which the company indicates that Europe is projected to dominate the sector, making up a 49% market share.
Leonardo has made numerous decisions to this end, having acquired Iveco Group’s defence business for just under $2bn (€1.7bn) in July, which will doubtless inform its side of the bargain in this latest endeavour with KNDS, besides forming a joint venture with another German armaments manufacturer, Rheinmetall, to deliver the Army Armoured Combat System to the Italian Army.
Meanwhile, KNDS has focused on localised production of its Leopard 2A8 main battle tank (MBT), for which it plans to build a Leopard 2A8 assembly plant in Lithuania. The country is awaiting an order for 44 units, which will become the Baltic nation’s first MBT fleet in its history.
Elsewhere, KNDS also partnered with Norwegian supplier RITEK, allowing the company to take on production responsibilities for the contract to supply the Norwegian military.
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By GlobalDataWill things work out?
Currently, the Italian Army operate the PzH 2000 mobile howitzer which is a KNDS design that entered service in June 2007. Leonardo was also involved in the production of the German howitzer with Consorzio Iveco-Oto Melara. It is fair to say that the renewed partnership for a successor platform is not out of the ordinary for the two suppliers.
However it should not go unnoticed that the two companies have previously entered a strategic partnership to develop an MBT in 2023, which was modelled on the Leopard 2A8, customised with Leonardo subsystems, but negotiations fell through last year.
KNDS stated that the fall out centred around disagreements over the configuration, thus, the former KNDS CEO Frank Haun said at the time, “Leonardo’s strategic participation [with] KNDS [has]… fallen short.” Nevertheless, industry observers will continue keep a watchful eye on their nascent agreement to discover whether the two parties can reconcile in developing a mobile howitzer.
Much like KNDS’ earlier insistence that the team “safeguard this standard” Leopard 2 model across the continent, it appears the German company is also eager to standardise the AGM too across Europe’s mobile howitzer fleets.
The turret system has a range of up to 54km and 360° azimuth and is already featured in the RCH 155 systems in Germany, the UK and Ukraine.
