Tank origin

In the 1960s, the Italian company OTO Melara started working on a tank destroyer with a limited turret traverse arc. The design was greatly influenced by promising advancements in German vehicles, and there were plans to incorporate design elements from both American and German vehicles. The vehicle was supposed to be equipped with a magazine loading system that had already been successfully implemented in naval artillery. Another unique feature of the vehicle was the placement of the driver in the turret with limited gun traverse. Eventually, work on this tank destroyer was suspended due to its dependence on its conceptual predecessor. All activity on the MBT-70 was canceled, leading to the discontinuation of the conceptual design, and the vehicle was never built.