The turret is in low rate initial production, the hull is admitted a little bit behind as they had tried several prototypes before confirming the design. RM had hoped to have tanks off the line by 3rd quarter 25, but that date sailed and now they are saying mid 1st quarter of 26.
Part of the issue with the Italian tanks is the EU only recently approved the JV with Leonardo. RM is still tooling up the Ukrainian factory and quite frankly isn’t going to be exporting anything for quite some time.
Which admittedly doesn’t really affect Canada, as the only way Canada is going to get a tank these days before 2032 is either tanking older M1A2’s of the US Army (which you noted it probably politically and economically poison right now) or fast tracking a program that has domestic production as part of it, and doing turret modernization to the Leo2’s in service until Canadian hulls could be built.
Leo2A8 delivery is running at 12 years from order at this point in time (potentially longer if more units get added to existing orders. LeoA7 isn’t any different as it’s the same line building them, and I believe they are shuttering the A7 line as soon as the last one on order is built to focus on the A8.
Lima OH is in pause mode on the US Army M1A2 Abrams until the M1A3 design is finalized. So refurbished Abrams is the only option for those not in the export queue already.
South Korea could probably deliver tanks sooner, but isn’t part of REARM, so…
