“Tomorrow we will have a meeting, a call, in which I presume Zelensky himself will be present, to take stock” of the aid to Ukraine. “It seems to me that Europe and Italy in particular have provided everything they were able to give in this period.” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said this, speaking at the meeting promoted by PwC Italia in collaboration with the Gedi publishing group, entitled ‘The role of military research in Italian economic development’.
“The problem – he explained – is that we have been coming for 40 years with the idea that defense was something we didn’t need, that defense supplies and investments were useless, so we don’t have full warehouses with which we can help. What we could give up to now Italy has given almost entirely. The part it has not yet given will be given soon”, said the minister.
“I am so angry that I say one thing publicly: Italy ordered some Samp-T air defense systems two years ago, the industry that has the order tells me that it will deliver them in three years. An order from Samp-T for the Italian defense made it two years ago, the industry tells me that it will deliver it in three years”, he continued.
“Do you think that someone can be a defense minister or defend a country in these times? I can’t understand how it is possible to take three years to build anything, even the most complex thing that exists in the world”, observed Crosetto, explaining that the problem is that “we have an industry that was calibrated on a production capacity in which the State makes the contract, gives the money, when it gives it we start building and then when we succeed, we deliver. Instead we live times when we need things right away.” The problem – the minister reported – “is not only Italian, but European. The French minister also has it, with whom we are having a two-way battle”.
Unlike what happens in Europe, “in Russia, China and Iran they pick up the phone and the company that previously made refrigerators” is converted for defense production. “We instead deal with rules built in times of peace and in normal times in times that are not of peace and are not normal.”
