Letter to Online Defense: "The Cinderella of the Armed Forces"

17/08/22

The comparative examination of the weapon systems of our three armed forces reveals a serious imbalance. While the Air Force and the Navy have largely modern armaments and often even among the best available in NATO, the Army, on the other hand, is poorly equipped and in a few sectors holds the comparison I don't say with the US Army, but at least with the armies of the main European powers.

At the state of the art they are: long-range anti-aircraft missiles (SAMP-T), the helicopter component, light weapons, logistic trucks, heavy busses, some artillery systems (MLRS and Pzh-2000).

Seriously gaps highlights, however, the armored component, with the tankers and bersaglieri reduced almost on foot, given the poor efficiency and poor performance of online media (Ariete and Dardo). The mass of artillery groups is armed with the FH70 cannon, in service for 50 years and now only in Italy (and Ukraine), not to mention the 105/14 howitzer adopted in 1956. The artillery also lacks drones who are working miracles in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Genius is devoid of ability to overcome extensive minefields. The anti-aircraft artillery missing of self-propelled vehicles able to protect columns of moving vehicles from low-altitude air attacks (the Stinger are few and they do not have of electronic warning and sighting systems). Even antidrone weapons hiding and those in service are only at an experimental level.

The mass of infantry and cavalry moves up light vehicles poorly protected and armed (Lince, Puma and BV-206) for use in high intensity conventional warfare contexts and in confrontation with armored forces. Still infantry and cavalry are devoid of drones and loitering munition.

These gaps in armament are essentially due to scarce funds allocated to the Army in the last decade, in which the Navy and the Air Force have played the lion's share of budget allocations.

I therefore address these questions to the top of the defense: Why do the pilots fly on F-35s and Typhoons and the sailors maneuver on FREMM frigates, Cavour aircraft carriers and U-212 submarines, all state-of-the-art systems, while tankers and Bersaglieri instead move on tanks that are among the absolute worst in the allied arsenal? Why this inequality to the detriment of the Army? What do they intend to do to remedy these deficiencies immediately without waiting for programs to improve the vehicles in service that involve very long times and uncertain results?

FC

  

Dear reader, thanks for your thought contribution. I want to answer while waiting for politics, for the umpteenth time, not to or does not want to do its part.

That between individual armed forces - it is important to emphasize - it is not a competition, it is a war between the poor! It follows that whoever receives half a portion of soup appears to those who tighten their belts as a "nabob" and the half cracker who finds himself in his hand (perhaps paid as much as an entire meal) a consoling "state of the art".

I do not want to enter here into the merits of individual weapons or weapon systems, I leave this part to other spaces for further study, however more than one reader hearing them defined as "avant-garde" will have raised an eyebrow ...

Is the hope at the top of the defense? Of course! But I fear that as long as it is called "political" (and nothing else !!!) the four-year delay on the commitment made by many governments (it was set for 2024, now 2028) for the achievement of 2% of expenses dedicated to Defense - decision implemented "paradoxically" (?) due to the war in Ukraine - we will have to resign ourselves to domestic agony and constant international decadence (read "humiliation").

Here there is no government to change for the umpteenth time, an entire country needs to be redone!

Andrea Cucco

Photo: US DoD