RWM Italia S.p.A.

RWM Italia is Rheinmetall's Italian munitions house and, inside the group's Weapon and Ammunition division, its designated centre for underwater defence, countermining, warheads and loitering munitions. It is wholly owned by Rheinmetall AG and employs more than 600 people. Ghedi, in the province of Brescia, holds the headquarters together with electronics and mechanical parts production. Domusnovas in Sardinia does the high volume explosive work, and the Italian ministry cleared full operation of that plant, including newly built production areas, in February 2026. A research and engineering branch opened in Turin in 2023, giving the company a design office away from the two production towns.

Underwater defence systems and combat diver products are the part of the portfolio that sets the company apart within Rheinmetall. It designs smart influence sea mines laid from submarines, surface ships and aircraft, limpet and scare charges for divers, and the countermining systems used to clear such weapons again. Australia bought a significant quantity of those mines under an order announced in August 2023, the first substantial export of the line. Italy followed. The Naval Armaments Directorate opened procurement for a containerised mine laying system in March 2026, with Rheinmetall pitching a platform-agnostic rail deployment approach that can be dropped onto a ship without permanent modification.

Aircraft bombs and filling services are the older business and the one that made the company politically visible. MK 82 and MK 83 general purpose bombs are built and filled at Domusnovas, and the plant also loads explosive into hardware supplied by other manufacturers. Export licences for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were revoked by the Italian government across 2019 and 2021, which cut into the workforce and put roughly 80 staff onto state support before European orders steadied the site. The chief executive was called before the parliamentary defence committee over that episode in 2021. Domusnovas has since been recast in Rome as a national and European strategic asset, and the February 2026 clearance was the formal step that reopened its full capacity.

Artillery and warheads cover the remainder. RWM supplies warhead sections and payloads into Rheinmetall's wider ammunition range, and it handles the group's loitering munitions work in Europe, including the HERO family and the HERO-120 variant that has drawn orders from NATO members. Land mine work continues alongside it, with a memorandum signed in March 2026 with Agenzia Industrie Difesa to modernise the Italian Army's existing anti-tank mine stock. Rheinmetall's Italian operations as a whole run to six sites, roughly 2,000 staff and about a billion euros of annual revenue. RWM should not be confused with Rheinmetall Italia in Rome, a separate company that handles air defence radars, guns and command elements.