The Italian Ministry of Defense intends to procure approximately 700 infantry fighting vehicles to modernize its fleet of tracked transport vehicles.

This information comes from Shepard Media.

The Defense Ministry aims to execute the A2CS program to upgrade tracked armored vehicles utilized by mechanized units for infantry transport.

The initial focus will be on replacing 180 Dardo IFVs, as well as M113 armored personnel carriers, including their Italian VCC-1/2 variant.

To implement this plan, the ministry plans to invest €6 billion and purchase 679 armored tracked vehicles.

It is expected that purchases will begin in 2026 and last until 2035. The Italian Ministry of Defense expects the investment from 2022 to 2035 to be €2.1 billion and the total cost of the program to be around €6 billion.

According to the plan, the new IFVs will be equipped with a modern positioning system, C4I systems for command, and a battlefield management system (BMS).

Additionally, the new vehicle platform is expected to be universal, serving as the foundation for developing a new main battle tank for Italy, as well as air defense systems, special engineering vehicles, self-propelled mortars, and other variants.

It should be noted that Italy is currently conducting a large-scale program to update the land fleet of armored vehicles. The first stage of the program will be the search for companies that will present their combat vehicle projects within the requirements published by the Italian Ministry of Defense. The main contenders are Italian Leonardo and Iveco, the French-German KNDS team, and German Rheinmetall.

The development of a new combat vehicle will take place in cooperation, since, according to representatives of the Italian industrial complex, at the moment no European country is capable of developing and producing the appropriate number of armored vehicles in a short time independently.

Previously, Militarnyi reported that the Italian Ministry of Defense began a program to purchase more than 1,000 tracked combat vehicles to update the fleet of armored vehicles.

As part of the general program of updates, in addition to the BMP Dardo and APC M113 (VCC-2), Puma armored wheeled vehicles should be replaced.