The FIAT-SNIAS agreement and Italian atomic development
In the meantime, other external events were about to favor, once again, the Italian aerospace development. As previously mentioned, French President George Pompidou suffered a fulminating septicemia while he was in his country home in Orvilliers on April 2, 1974. Transported to Paris by ambulance, his condition worsened further and he died at 9 p.m. in his home at the Quai de Béthune, on the Île Saint-Louis. He was succeeded by the Economy and Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had a low estimate of the French and European aerospace effort, which he considered "the most insane expense ever faced by France since the time of Marie Antoinette". Once obtained the place that had been in Pompidou, d'Estaing began a series of cuts to the French budget in search of funds to be allocated to the modernization and expansion of French military forces. Among the many plans and programs left without funds by d'Estaing was the "Phoenix" missile program, which was closed.
The closure of the French aerospace program, however, was terrible news for the Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale (SNIAS), a French aerospace company specialized in the manufacture of civilian and military planes and helicopters, as well as rockets. It was precisely the company that, long before, had entered into a contract with the French government for the construction and purchase of various rockets destined to bring the first European personnel into orbit. For this company, the closure of the program was a unexpected bolt: for some months, in fact, the construction of the first of the commissioned rockets had started near its factories in Calais, Lyon and Nice. The company had invested heavily in this project, and absolutely needed the money of the contract to pay its own expenses necessary for the strengthening of their industrial capacity and the realization of the parts necessary for the rockets. At first the company hoped to still be able to obtain, from the French government, all or at least part of the expected payment, but in a circular of June 1974 d'Estaing himself warned the company that the French government would not honor the agreements made, limiting itself to a partial payment which would not have been sufficient to reimburse the huge expenses incurred by the company. The company reacted by suing the government to force d'Estaing to honor the commitments made with the company and to pay what was necessary for it to repay its expenses incurred for the construction of the rockets. But the court ruled in favor of d'Estaing, who pointed out that, in the contract established between the two parties, the French government had inserted a clause that provided for the cancellation with prejudice of all agreements if the French nation “found itself in a situation such as this to require an immediate reconversion of all the funds available to prevent social, economic or military crises” and citing how the difficult diplomatic situation with the USSR (tense since the time of Brezhnev's death) was a fitting example of the situation enumerated by the clause.
Moro, informed of the facts "from the newspapers" (as he himself stated time after the closure of the story) saw, in the crisis between the French government and its industry, an opportunity. After contacting FIAT (the main Italian industrial company, with which ASI itself had entered into a collaboration agreement for the construction of various hardware for missile use), Moro went to Paris, where he met the legal representatives of SNIAS and entered into a profitable commercial-economic agreement with them. According to the clauses established by the agreement, the Italian government would pay a sufficient sum to SNIAS so that it could complete the construction of at least three rockets. These, however, should have been modified, according to ASI directives, to be adapted to Italian needs and to the transport of biological or personal material in orbit. FIAT would have acted as an intermediary and coordinator between the two parties.
Thanks to the agreement, SNIAS was able to exit (albeit with some serious losses) from the financial crisis brought to it by the cancellation of the contract by d'Estaing, while the Italian government and ASI were rewarded by several reliable industries for the building their own orbiting rockets. The Italian attempt to expand this agreement for the construction of rockets also useful for military purposes, however, failed due to interference by the French government.
In the meantime, the Italian economic and energy development continued, especially the development of nuclear energy. In the following years (from 1974 to 1976), the Italian government would have built three new nuclear power plants with pressurized water reactor on its territory. On the strength of this personal success, Moro and Berlinguer (both re-elected) gave way to a plan to equip Italy with its own nuclear arsenal.
Once again, the right starting point for Italy were external events. In 1976, Switzerland conducted its first atomic test for making nuclear weapons. This produced an "encirclement syndrome" in Italy that on the one hand frightened the population, but on the other hand gave the government the right motivation to authorize further expenses in the field of nuclear research and for the development of intercontinental missiles. With the support of Crocco and Robotti, the highest development and construction priority was given to the new ALFA ballistic missiles, which were modified to accommodate and transport tactical and strategic atomics.
Those were times full of uncertainty and fear, but also of excitement and hope for the future. As later some young people of the time would have told:
“Something happened every day that went by. The Swiss had made their first military nuclear test, and now we too were on the verge of getting our ballistic missile. At the same time, the Moro and Berlinguer space project continued to fascinate and make the minds of all those who saw, like us, the future full of hope dream…”
The Italian response to the Swiss military nuclear test would materialize on April 6, 1976, with the first Italian ballistic missile test. The rocket ALFA-1, launched with ASI assistance from the joint Italian-American military base on the island of Maddalena. It reached a height of almost 553 kilometers just above the island of Menorca and then plunged into the sea off Chamaca, after a flight of almost 2,500 kilometers. The Italian missile test had been expected for some time and many interested European nations, including especially the NATO nations, had long been informed of the event. However, there were the same protests from some political parties and interested nations. In Rome, a crowd of over 1000 students demonstrated at the headquarters of the Army General Staff, at Via Venti Settembre 123 / A at Rome. Vibrant protests also came from the Spanish government, whose dictator Francisco Franco (who had won the Civil War against the Republicans thanks to the military and economic aid of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany) asked the Italian government that any future missile tests conducted near to the Spanish metropolitan territory were to be communicated through his ambassador and had to be approved by himself.
However, the protests of Franco, an old dinosaur who represented the ancient threat that fascism had assumed for the world, were little compared to the protests of the united governments of England and France. The two European nations, until then the only custodians of tactical nuclear power, were very upset by the now imminent Italian entry into the club of nuclear weapons-holding European nations. Not only because this would have given Italy greater weight on the table of decisions within NATO (on which Italy, however, already exercised a heavy influence due to its strategic position in the center of the Mediterranean), but also because of the fear that the subsequent elections could lead to the Warsaw Pact a new ally equipped with atomic weapons. This would have significantly weakened NATO's power in Europe, and on the contrary, would have allowed the Warsaw Pact and the USSR to extend a new wave of indirect power over African countries bordering the Mediterranean, on which Europe depended largely for their supplies of raw materials and energy. Gradually, this was the nightmare, the frontier of the Iron Curtain would move westward, directly touching the English Channel and the French border.
Once again, Moro found a way to take advantage of the fears of other nations. In a new meeting held at Vichy with the French President of Estaing and with the French ambassador of the United Kingdom, Moro, deliberately exaggerating the risk of a new wave of votes for the Italian Communist Party (which would have defined Italy in Moscow's orbit), managed to obtain a loan from the UK and France at a subsidized rate to finance the election campaign of the Christian Democratic Party. This loan, unbeknownst to its financiers, however, would not have been used to finance the election campaign, but would have ended up straight among the funds destined for the ASI, which in turn would have used them to complete its first, ambitious space test.
On March 7, 1977, Italy would have sent its first man into space.
