The Vienna Talks and the Italian Armoured Tank Series

Abstract

The information which has leaked from the Vienna Conference on European conventional disarmament leads us to hope that the negotiations will soon reach a positive conclusion. An agreement on heavy tanks or Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) appears to be just around the corner. This would set the maximum limit for both the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact at 20 000 single vehicles. As has already been calculated, this would bring about an approximate 10 per cent reduction in NATO’s present capacity while the reduction would reach about 60 per cent for the Warsaw Pact. It is also a known fact that the latter’s tank section is on the whole much more out of date than its NATO counterpart.