Berlin, Germany (World Express). On 21 December 2024, the communist magazine Contropiano addressed the role of the largest Italian arms company, Leonardo, in European war production on its online portal. This arms giant emerged from the Fabrica Italiano Automobile Torino (FIAT), which was in fact the largest arms company in Italy. Its current owner, John Elkann, a member of the Agnelli founding family, controls the Dutch holding company Exor, an arms cartel that includes the Dutch-British company Case and New Holland (CNH). This in turn has a share in Leonardo, whose head for many years was the current defence minister of the fascist Meloni government, Guido Crosetto. At the same time, through FIAT Iveco Defence, it is the leading supplier of the Italian army, including with ‘Centauro II’ armoured vehicles. Exor also has a share in the luxury saloon carmaker Rolls Royce, which supplies Rolls-Royce engines for about 25 per cent of all military aircraft worldwide. This includes 56 EJ200 engines that the German air force has ordered for its Eurofighters. MT30 turbines from Rolls Royce will be used by the South Korean Navy for the third series of Ulsan-class frigates. The UK will receive Rolls Royce’s new and advanced pressurised water reactor PWR-3 for the next generation of its attack submarines.
On 15 December 2024, the CEO of Leonardo, former minister in Mario Draghi’s 2021/22 government, Roberto Cingolani, explained in an interview for the Roman ‘La Repubblica’ that in a more or less declared state of war, it is necessary to give arms manufacturers a say so that they can legitimise their actions in public opinion. It should be noted here that Elkan is the owner of one of the most important Italian media groups, Gruppo Editoriale SpA (Gedi), which includes twelve newspapers, eight magazines, four radio stations and 23 digital publications, including the influential Turin-based La Stampa and IlSècolo XIX, as well as radio stations such as Radio Dee Jay and Radio Capital.
According to Contropiano, the picture sketched by Cingolani shows that, against the backdrop of Brussels playing a more active role in global competition and its projection onto tension scenarios around the world, Leonardo is increasingly taking on the function of a pillar of European rearmament. In short, the role that a fully imperialist power would like to take on.
The conflict in Ukraine marked a turning point in this direction, because it broke the still dynamic and not without conflict stalemate that had characterised relations between the great powers until a few years ago. ‘Interoperable multidomain’ is the definition that the company’s CEO gave to the all-encompassing global security approach that the Italian giant wants to pursue.
This means that they are contributing their part to an integrated model that is increasingly tailored to the needs of war, in which war development, cyber security, energy and food autonomy go hand in hand.
In the latter case, the EU, which does not have large resources, works through agreements with African countries and the wider Mediterranean region, from the Sahel to the Persian Gulf.
In the first points, however, Leonardo wants to be at the forefront of a European community that, according to Cingolani, will have to deal with the usual problems of fragmentation of guidelines and supply chains as quickly as possible.
This is another reason why the giant of Piazza Monte Grappa (the headquarters of Leonardo) ‘wants to become an increasingly international and networked company, whose central product will be global security,’ emphasised the Communist Magazine.
The former Italian minister gave some examples that make everything clear: if ‘the current need is to ensure communication on all platforms’, then, in addition to aircraft and helicopters, there are also space and satellite services that ensure communication, electronic tools and supercomputers for digital development and cybersecurity.
But even in peacetime, according to Cingolani, the protection of computer data applies, because satellites also enable major quality leaps in civilian applications, such as precision agriculture and climatology. ‘We have built a technology that works in all areas, that is, on Earth, in the sky and in space, in the sea and in the digital continuum,’ Cingolani said.
If we want to put it another way, which is perhaps less expendable for the mainstream media, Leonardo has set up a series of work divisions that comprehensively impact each of the fundamental areas of EU civil and military life, bringing them into synergy to respond to Brussels’ target strategies.
The agreement with Rheinmetall for a new tank, according to Cingolani, is ‘the first clear demonstration that a European defence area can be created at the industrial level’.
The German Panther and the Italian Digital are being united to create a new medium capable of competing on the battlefields of the future, at least as imagined after the Ukrainian experience.
Then there is a sentence that says, again, that technological development is anything but neutral. On the lack of necessary skills, Cingolani elaborates: ‘When I was in academia, I hired researchers from China or Iran: you can’t do that with Leonardo’s technology for security reasons’ because it is designed to wage war precisely against those countries.
As for the skies, Cingolani admits that they are falling behind when it comes to drones, even if they make Leonardo’s digital capabilities available in collaborative programmes with other manufacturers. Then there is the tiltrotor AW 609 (a hybrid between an aeroplane and a helicopter).
Today, only American Bell and Piazza Monte Grappa still have this type of technology, and the Italian prototype should soon be certified as a civil vehicle. ‘Then we will evaluate military operations,’ adds Cingolani.
But the real flagship in the air sector will be the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP). This is a sixth-generation stealth fighter that will be invisible to radar and will be able to remotely control a fleet of unmanned drones: an ‘aircraft carrier in the sky,’ as Cingolani said.
A joint venture between the Italian Leonardo, the British BAE Systems and the Japanese Mitsubishi was signed a week ago, expressing the desire to support a Euro-Atlantic structure (extended to Japan) for the aircraft to replace the fleets of the participating countries from 2035.
The estimated cost of developing the drones and the software to manage the swarm of devices is around €100 billion, which is why Cingolani would welcome the Saudis on board the project: ‘They want to create an aerospace industry’ that can tie in with the GCAP programme and put them at the centre of the large Middle Eastern market, ‘and they have a lot of money to spend.
There is also competition from FCAS, a consortium of France, Germany and Spain, to develop a fighter with similar characteristics to the GCAP. However, according to the Italian CEO, the other European allies are lagging behind the new joint venture with Leonardo, and besides, as was said some time ago, the two programmes do not necessarily contradict each other.
Finally, the space economy, in particular satellite services, should be seen in terms of their possible applications, which range ‘from defence to geology, from agriculture to geolocalisation’. For this sector, Cingolani hopes for a greater opening up to the private sector, as well as broader and stronger European alliances that will make it possible to reduce national particularism.
The underlying message is still the same: we need to create a European military-industrial complex, not just in the military sense, but one that encompasses all the important and mature sectors of the capitalist cycle as it functions today. There is no separation between civil and military, everything serves only to win the battle in the global competition.
