Yesterday in Rome, Leonardo presented its new integrated defence system: MICHELANGELO DOME. Designed to counter emerging threats in an increasingly complex global environment, the project stems from the need to protect critical infrastructure, sensitive urban areas, national and European territories, and high-value assets through a modular, open, scalable and multi-domain solution. Not a single system focused solely on “classic” air and missile defence - which remains central - but a comprehensive architecture integrating next-generation land, naval, airborne and space sensors, cyber-defence platforms, command-and-control systems, artificial intelligence and coordinated effectors. In practice, the platform creates a dynamic security dome capable of detecting, tracking and neutralising threats - including during saturation attacks - across all operational domains: aero-missile (including hypersonic weapons and drone swarms), maritime (surface and subsurface), and land. As emphasised during the presentation by Roberto Cingolani, Leonardo’s CEO and General Director, “legacy doctrines kept land, air and naval assets essentially separated, with little communication and each limited to its own task. The goal of MICHELANGELO is to create the connective layer those doctrines lacked.” Through advanced fusion of multisource sensor data and the use of predictive algorithms, MICHELANGELO can anticipate hostile behaviour, optimise the operational response and automatically coordinate the most suitable effector. It provides 360° protection based on interconnection, interoperability and true multi-domain capability. What is missing today to ensure that the so-called multi-domain approach becomes fully interoperable, Cingolani added, “is platform interconnection. Systems must communicate, be interchangeable, and be able to detect a threat, identify it, understand its origin, track it and decide how to neutralise it.” A sort of orchestra, where capability does not lie in individual instruments but in their synchronisation. Fundamentally, MICHELANGELO DOME is a system-of-systems with distributed all-domain C2 capabilities, designed to support near real-time decision-making by providing a unified, coherent and actionable information picture, and to execute multi-domain orchestration in threat evaluation and subsequent engagement, including weapon/effector assignment. It is an upper-layer C5 system that integrates with current NATO command-and-control architectures (ensuring full Alliance interoperability), including legacy platforms already in service across several European nations - particularly along NATO’s Eastern Flank - while adding multi-domain capabilities within the Alliance’s “kill chain”. In essence, an enabling layer that interconnects existing systems which were never originally designed to interoperate. On this point, Cingolani highlighted that “if a country on NATO’s Eastern Flank cannot afford an F-35 or a PATRIOT battery but possesses an air-defence missile system, we can integrate it into the MICHELANGELO DOME, adding NATO-compliant communication protocols and doctrinal interfaces.” The system can conduct computational analysis on data volumes amounting to hundreds of terabytes per second, sourced from radars, satellites and infrared sensors, while ensuring full data protection (cyber-resilient and secure-by-design). Practically speaking, the system’s core is a plugin module called MC5, which enables integration across multiple platforms with low latency and AI-assisted data distribution and synchronisation to accelerate decision-making. The module effectively enables the transition from a “kill chain” to a “kill web” approach - shifting from “one sensor, one shooter” to “one sensor, best or any shooter”. As Cingolani stressed, the project “will be built around an integrated project team involving all Italian Armed Forces. Without such an integrated team, we would be speaking about a purely theoretical technological exercise.” Continuous interface with, and direct involvement of, the Armed Forces in designing the system architecture according to their requirements is essential, especially for a programme of this magnitude. In recent days, the project was presented to the Minister of Defence Guido Crosetto, to the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Luciano Portolano, and to all Service Chiefs. Regarding the product’s complexity, Cingolani underlined that, as of today, “only Leonardo can propose such an ambitious system at both hardware and software level.” He also referenced a recent exercise off Crete demonstrating Leonardo’s ability to intercept fast-moving targets, proving that the company’s detection and response systems meet NATO expectations. As for the roadmap, by late 2027 the first deliverable products will be available, following the 2026-27 integration phase with current integrated air-and-missile-defence assets. In the subsequent two years, additional solutions will be implemented with new operational assets.

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