OTO Melara contract for delivery of 81 Hitrole Light turrets for Italian army Lince 4x4 armored 3003.

This order follows a request from the Italian Army as an Urgent Operational Requirement following some casualties among Lince machine gunners who operated the weapon without protection. The initial order was for 64 turrets, which was then increased to 81, one of them being the prototype which will undergo the qualification trials.

The Italian Army asked for a turret which should be easily installed on all existing and future Lince, to maintain unchanged the current hatch in the vehicle roof, to install the turret in front of the hatch in order to be able to use it also manually in a back-up mode (the weapon being aimed at about ±45° from the vehicle centreline).

Reload under armour, which was possible with the base model, was abandoned, allowing to reduce the interface opening from a diameter of 800 mm to some 40-50 mm. The interface between the turret and the vehicle has a weight of 10-20 kg, while cabling and the command console weigh some 15-20 kg.

As for the turret itself, this has a weight of 130 kg when armed with an MG 42/59 7.62 mm machine gun, 140 kg with an M2 12.7 mm, and 145 kg with a Mk 19 40 mm AGL, with a saving of 70 kg compared to the base model which was installed on some Italian Army Puma 6x6 armoured cars in early 2008.