Italian Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta announced last week that she has decided to postpone the planned € 250 million purchase of eight P.1HH drones produced by Piaggio Aerospace, Italy’s only manufacturer of large drones. Part of the funding, around 70 million euro, was due to finalizing the development and certification process of the programme.
The company, which has over a thousand employees, has been in crisis for some time; it is now under extraordinary receivership. Trenta said the ministry continues to “support the creation of suitable conditions” to keep the company running, and mentioned the intention of buying some of the company’s P180 Avanti twin-turboprop business aircraft to replace the ministry’s current fleet. “Further assessment about the P.1HH is ongoing to find out new synergies allowing the programme to proceed”, the Ministry said in a statement.
However, there are doubts about the aircraft’s performance, and in a recent parliamentary hearing the Italian Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Alberto Rosso, called the Ministry to reconsider the decision.
The Italian Air Force signed an agreement to become the P.1HH’s “launch customer” at the IDEX show in Abu Dhabi in February 2015, and was initially due to order four systems, each comprising two aircraft and a ground station. The UAE Air Force was due to order a further four systems; Mubadala Development, a unit of the UAE sovereign fund, owned 100% of Piaggio Aerospace equity.
Trenta’s decision to postpone the order seems to be due as much to the necessity to match the Italian Air Force needs while giving the programme a long-term value.
After P.1HH, Piaggio Aerospace had finalised a project to develop a new model, the P.2HH, which was considered to offer better prospects, it was still in the initial design phase when development was suspended when the company went into administration.
The Italian government, along with the United Arab Emirates sovereign fund Mubadala Development, which owned half of the company, were to have invested nearly € 800 million each in the project. Despite Trenta’s promise to continue investing, P.2HH project was quietly dropped after the Emiratis shareholders decided to leave.
Source: Defense Aerospace