The Italian Army has recently become a professional all-volunteer force of some 112,000 active duty personnel, around 70% male, 30% female. Recent legislation to promote membership of the Italian Army guarantees post-Army careers of volunteers in the Carabinieri Corps, Italian State Police , Italian Finance Guard and Italian State Forestry Corps, amongst other bodies. The headquarters of the modern Italian Army is located in Verona, in northeastern Italy.

Command Structure

The Italian Military is under the command of the Italian Supreme Defence Council, presided by the President of the Italian Republic, and it is to the Head of State that personnel swear an oath of allegiance. The overall commander of Italian army forces is the COMFOTER - or Commander of Operational Land Forces. The COMFOTER has direct command of a number of support brigades as well as over three major sub-commands.

Operational Forces

Since the end of the Cold War, Italy has downsized its Army and since the mid-1970s has abandoned the use of Divisions and rather depends upon flexible brigades. There are some 8 projection combat brigades, 6 projection support brigades, in addition to 3 home brigades.

The projection brigades may be deployed outside of Italy and are often involved in either war-fighting or peace-keeping operations on foreign soil. They are characterised by quality, efficiency, motivation and mobility. The projection combat brigades include: 132nd Armoured Brigade 'Ariete', Cavalry Brigade 'Pozzuolo del Friuli', Infantry Brigade 'Sassari', Light Infantry Brigade 'Garibaldi', Airmobile Brigade 'Friuli', Parachute Brigade 'Folgore', Mountain Brigade 'Taurinese' and Mountain Brigade 'Julia'. The projection support brigades include the Engineer Brigade, the Artillery Brigade, the Army Air Corps Brigade, and the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, as well as the Logistics Brigade and the Transmissions Brigade. The brigades are composed of a number of regiments and are often deployed by regiment, especially the support brigade regiments as adjuncts to combat divisions. The three home brigades are destined to a role of 'presence and surveillance' of key Italian institutions, these include the Infantry Brigade 'Aosta', the Infantry Brigade 'Granatieri di Sardegna' and the Armoured Brigade 'Pinerolo'. They are not designed for extra-territorial missions, and members expect to remain in Italy throughout their service years.

These units are organised into the 1st Defence Forces Command (132nd Armoured, Cavalry Brigade 'PdF', Parachute Brigade 'Folgore' and Airmobile Brigade 'Friuli'), 2nd Defence Forces Command (Light Infantry Brigade 'Garibaldi', Infantry Brigade 'Aosta', Infantry Brigade 'Granatieri di Sardegna', and Mountain Troop Command - with the Julia and Taurinese brigades.

Effective Operational Capability

The Italian Army is thus composed of eight combat brigades, numbering between 3-7,000 troops each. These units are the pride of the Italian Army and are a front-line well-equipped force capable of dealing with most emergency situations; in total they number some 42,000 ground troops. Additional support units include engineer, artillery and air corps assets.

Equipment

The Italians are equipped with NATO-standard issue kit and weapons. Their primary Main Battle Tank, the Leopard 1A5 is being replaced by the indigenously-produced third-generation C1 Ariete. Armoured Personnel Carriers in the form f B1 Centauros for use in Cavalry regiments have become much in demand amongst US war plannners. The Italian Army was the first European Army to field an attack helicopter, the A129 light-attack scout chopper Mangusta (Mongoose).

Operations

A post-WWII peace treaty signed by Italy prevented the country from deploying military forces in overseas operations as well as possessing fixed-wing vessel-based aircraft for twenty-five years following the end of the war. This treaty expired in 1970, but it would not be until 1982 that Italy first deployed troops on foreign soil, with a peacekeeping contingent being despatched to Beirut in that year following a UN request for troops. Since the 1980s, Italian troops have participated with other Western countries in peacekeeping operations across the world, especially in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East. As yet, the Italian Army has not engaged in major combat operations since World War II; though Italian Special Forces have taken part in anti-Taleban operations in Afghanistan as Task Force 'Nibbio'. Italy was not yet a member of the United Nations in 1950, when that organisation went to war with North Korea, the 1964-73 Vietnam War was a 'police action' on the part of the United States with neither a formal declaration of war, neither was NATO involved (as the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the entire war itself took place outside NATO jurisdiction). Italy did take part in the 1990-91 Gulf War but solely through the deployment of eight Italian Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS bomber jets to Saudi Arabia; Italian Army troops were subsequently deployed to assist Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq following the conflict. The Italian Army did not take part in combat operations of the 2003 Iraq War; despatching troops only after May 1, 2003 - when major combat operations were declared over by the US president, George W Bush aboard the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Subsequently Italian troops arrived in the late summer of 2003, and have been scheduled to begin leaving their southern Iraqi base near Nasiriyah by September 2005. Some twenty Italian troops have been killed in Iraq in the past two years - with the greatest single loss of life coming on November 12, 2004 - a suicide car bombing of the Italian Carabinieri Corps HQ left a dozen Carabinieri, five Army soldiers, two Italian civilians and eight Iraqi bystanders dead.