Wanted to post this later and mention you, but your version is much better! Just going to provide a few additions. The amount of tanks that the Italian Army wants to acquire (and the figure the Defense Committee of the Chamber of Deputies approved back in February) is 271, of which 133 in the combat version and the rest in bridgelayer, recovery and engineering versions (the figure excludes up to 125 Ariete C2: 90 approved + 35 in option). According to Italian reports, Italy wanted heavy customizations (turret by OTO Melara, electronics/sensors by Leonardo, hull produced by Iveco Defense Vehicles). KNDS would only be willing to grant some minor modifications and supply of components from Italian companies, in addition to requiring Leonardo to acquire IDV. These conditions aren’t deemed acceptable by Italy, which aims to maintain some know-how in MBT manufacturing, as well as giving a workload as high as possibile to its domestic companies. Moreover, a final agreement on the price was never actually reached with KNDS. Let’s recall that “Italianization” of the vehicle and production in Italy are essential conditions; the Italian Army had also evaluated the Abrams and excluded it mainly for these reasons. On the other hand, negotiations with Rheinmetall are reportedly easier and the latter’s executives much more willing to agree to Italian demands. There is thus a possibility that Italy may look at acquiring the new KF51 Panther and possibly be its first operator. In this case, it would be almost a foregone conclusion that, in regards to the 1,000 tracked IFVs that the Italian Army wants to acquire, the choice would fall on the KF41 Lynx, which as of now looked the favorite anyway.

As far as I know it’s not specified and honestly I don’t have clear ideas, at most some theories but I don’t know what basis they have. The original plans of the Italian Ministry of Defense were to favor a merger between IDV and OTO Melara and enter the MGCS program, but now it seems that Leonardo will acquire IDV and keep OTO Melara, while Italy’s role in MGCS is still unclear, aside from cordial conversations with the French MoD. But in any case, the agreement between Leonardo and Iveco is not that close and will probably take other months, whereas KNDS was asking for tight timelines.