Huh that’s a big one, especially because of the geopolitics of Italy.
The geopolitical situation of Italy is extremely challenging, fragile, and complicated. I’ll try to be as concise as possible.
Italy is surrounded by unfriendly or semi-hostile countries, with few exceptions, most of which covertly but actively encroach on Italian interests in the region and have been doing so for a while.
All Italy’s major NATO allies (in primis France, Turkey, Germany, the USA, and the UK) lead geopolitical actions that directly or indirectly encroach on its interests.
The 1990s political and judiciary instability was instrumental in ending the First Republic, which lead to the demise of an entire political class, and Italy has never recovered since. Amongst other consequences, a slow but creeping paralysis of geostrategic vision and capability has materialised.
The first instance of this was the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a country with which Italy had enjoyed extremely favourable relations. This maneuver, led by Franco-German interests, largely destroyed Italian influence in the region (with the sole exception of Albania, and residual influence in Serbia/Montenegro).
The resulting new states immediately entered German orbit, especially Slovenia and Croatia, with which relations have remained tense ever since and whose Italian minorities are rapidly being slavicised.
The South Tyrol question has never been solved in the aftermath of a massive NS terrorist campaign in the 1950s and 1960s, and tensions routinely re-emerge with Austria.
Another key area is Lybia, with which Italy had largely mended relations in the 2000s, and had started enjoying a special relationship amid the penetration of Italian oil companies in the former colony.
This relation was destroyed in 2011 by the unilateral assault on Qaddafi by France (with NATO soon following suit), while at the same time Berlusconi was pressured by the EU Troika to resign. The subsequent technocratic government inaugurated a new decade of crippling political instability which is still ongoing.
Italian interests in Lybia have been in great jeopardy ever since, with Italy finding itself supporting a weak internationally-recognised government in an uncomfortable partnership with Turkey, while France (and others) support Haftar’s coalition.
In the rest of MENA there could be a lot more to say, but basically Italian influence has been waning (if not actively disestablished by other powers) everywhere, but most importantly in Lebanon, Egypt, and the Horn of Africa. (Pro-NATO source)
That said, Italian doctrine still provides for a massing of most troops in the North-East and North-West of the country, with some other notable concentrations of forces around Rome, Naples, and in Sardinia.
In the Cold War, up to 70% of all available forces were deployed on the Yugoslav border in the event of a Communist invasion; this has been somewhat revised but not completely.
The Italian Army is rather well motorized and mechanised; it can count on about 200 Ariete tanks, 300 Centauro tank destroyers, over 800 IFVs, over 1300 APCs and other lightly armoured vehicles, and about 4000 infantry transports.
About 10000 heavy hauling vehicles are about right, given the size of the country and its peculiar conformation to support logistics.
54 SPHs and 120 other artillery systems can provide adequate support.
It is notable that the Italian Army has at its disposal an astonishing 150 armoured recovery and engineering vehicles, which should excellently support mechanised forces on the ground. (By comparison, France only has about 50)
The Italian Navy operates 2 aircraft carriers (the only EU country to do so), 3 helicopter carriers , 4 Destroyers, 12 Frigates, 10 Minehunters, and 8 Submarines, with about 12 transport/support ships of notable size.
This makes the Italian Navy probably the strongest naval power operating in the Mediterranean at any one time (considering that the French and Turkish navies operate in the Atlantic and Black Sea respectively, too, this does not mean that Italy has the most powerful navy amongst Mediterranean countries overall).
The Italian Air Force operates about 150 fighter jets (Eurofighters and Panavia Tornados, mostly), which is adequate but not optimal given the size of Italian air space.
Air defence can count on a towering 48 SAM systems, divided equally between SAMP/T and Skyguard Aspide systems - probably one of the most extensive Air Defence systems amongst the one ones I have ever written about. We surely can’t complain.
All in all, Italy’s challenges are more geostrategic and geopolitical than military per se. This does not mean that the Italian Armed forces are immaculate; while they appear to be well-equipped and quite numerous (counting the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza, the Italian military could virtually count on over 300.000 men), they are plagued by inefficiency and corruption.
Corruption and bribery schemes are uncovered all the time, while the military budget includes absurd amounts of money for “operationally unrelated expenses”, administrative expenses, and international missions.
Mismanagement and disinterest for military expenses (if not outright corruption) are often documented, but political and judiciary chaos prevents adequate repression of these phenomena.
A particularly tight esprit de corps, actively hampers investigations (even in the case of grave crimes, like drug trafficking from Afghanistan, inadequate protection from depleted uranium and nuclear waste disposal), while meritocracy is pretty much non-existant: all roles are redistributed semi-nepotistically amongst the officer cadre trained in the military’s academy - the only open positions/careers are technical roles, while general volunteers have to stick with grunt ranks forever (one of the reasons I never joined). Professionalization is generally low, and open entries on a contract-by-contract basis don’t exist.
In addition to this, as Italian general industrial capacity shrinks year after year, so sinks the quality of military equipment produced (combined with corruption). Some vessels of the navy have been found with faulty water purification systems, the Ariete tank has always been okay but not exactly a breakthrough vehicle regarding the technology employed (and interest in the production of a 100% Italian replacement is dissipating); replacement submarines have been already ordered from Germany, thus ending a secular tradition of Italian submarine shipbuilding, while the disastrous acquisition of 60 F35s from the US seems to have stalled, for now. The inefficiency of the military policing and internal security systems, as well as secret service operations are an entirely related matter but it would be too verbose to elaborate about that here.
