The Army's only failed SAFE contract. Why MApN did not buy armored Piranha 5: “I directed the money to another program”

The army no longer signed the contract financed by SAFE for the purchase of 139 8×8 Piranha 5 armored personnel carriers produced at the Bucharest Mechanical Plant. The Defense Minister says the program “could not be approved” because the construction firm came up with a final offer where the price was “almost double the value approved by Parliament”.

Of the 10 individual acquisition programs of MApN through SAFE military funds, “only one came with a price almost double the value approved by the Parliament and thus could not be approved”, announced the Minister of Defense, Radu Miruță.

“We are talking about the Piranha 5 armored personnel carriers, which until a few months ago we were taking in the endowment of the Army for 4.8 million euros, but after calculations with inflation it was concluded that a price approved by the Parliament was about 6 million euros, and the offer received was 9.4 million euros and was rejected”, said Miruță when he announced the signing of the rest of the SAFE contracts.

“No criteria changed during the procedure”

Miruță said that the money that would have gone to the Piranha contract was relocated for the last hundred meters to another contract, the one with Rheinmetall, for supplementing the order of Lynx armored vehicles.

“The 831 million euros that were assigned to the Piranha 5 project, this money was not lost. It was redistributed to buy the second tranche of infantry fighting vehicles from now on, which we initially calculated to buy in the future, at a probably higher price then,” explained Miruță.

Later, the Minister of Defense gave more detailed information about the non-finalization of the contract for Piranha 5 Carriers.

“An offer was received with a price approximately 2.5 times higher than the one paid by Romania in March 2026 and almost double the maximum limit approved in Parliament. No criterion was changed during the procedure,” said Miruță.

He said that in March 2026 MApN paid about 3.9 million euros on a Piranha 5 transporter.

“Compared to this contract, where the average price was around 4 million euros, the analysis of price increase indicators led to the approval in the Parliament of a higher ceiling, of approximately 6 million euros per piece, even though the factory was already built and did not involve an increase in relocation costs,” says Miruță.

The 8×8 Piranha 5 armored vehicles are produced by General Dynamics European Land Systems in Romania through a joint venture with the Bucharest Mechanical Plant.

“The new offer received within SAFE was about 10 million euros per piece. NB: while the infantry fighting vehicle, a superior product, from a completely different category, has a price of about 11.2 million euros,” says Miruță who presents a table with the prices paid in the old contract through which Romania already bought 227 Piranha armored vehicles, the prices approved by the Parliament and the offers now received from the manufacturer.

The money for Piranha 5 will buy more armored Lynx

The Minister of Defense claims that “MApN did not change the operational criteria submitted to the task force to eliminate Piranha. They were submitted from the beginning, before I arrived at the ministry, and were not changed afterwards.”

“We cannot pay 10 million euros for something we purchased for 4 million euros just a few months before. The offer received for Piranha significantly exceeded the values ​​approved by the Romanian Parliament and could not be legally contracted. In order not to lose the funds, they were redirected to other endowment programs, within the limits approved by the same Parliament,” says Miruță

Thus, the money originally allocated for the Piranha 5 contract, about 831 million euros, was moved to the purchase of MLI Lynx from Rheinmetall.

Initially, the Army's SAFE program provided for an amount of 2.6 billion euros for 232 KF-41 Lynx infantry fighting vehicles produced in Mediaș, with an approval from the Parliament that after the SAFE program another 66 Lynx armored vehicles would be purchased for another 740 million euros, money that would have come exclusively from the budget.

According to the information from the MApN presentation, the KF-41 Lynx armored vehicles will be partially produced in Romania, with a degree of production localization of 40% at Automecanica Mediaș.

How many armored Piranha 5 does Romania already have in its inventory

Since January 2018, Romania has signed a contract worth around 900 million euros for 227 Piranha 5 armored personnel carriers.

The contract, signed with Mowag, owned by General Dynamics European Land Systems (GDELS), stipulated that the first few dozen transporters would be produced in Switzerland, and the following ones would be initially assembled, then produced in Romania.

In 2022, GDELS and UMB signed a joint venture to produce Piranha 5 armored vehicles in Bucharest. From this contract, all 227 combat vehicles have been delivered to date.

Part of the local production of the Piranha 5 armor, according to HotNews sources, included the 120mm Cardom turret and mortar produced by Elbit, the optical systems produced by ProOptica, the command-control software systems developed by Interactive, as well as the armored case. This last element – the armored case – represents a product that cannot be made by any simple welding unit, but by a highly skilled one.

GDELS called on Damen and welded at the Mangalia Shipyard the armored hulls for the Piranha 5 transporters that have been produced locally so far.