BERLIN — The industries of Germany and France will have an equal share of work in the development and production of a future tank, the countries’ defense ministers announced March 22.
The Main Ground Combat System deal, to be formalized in late April as a memorandum of understanding, caps years of wrangling over national preferences for the industry’s two main players: the consortium of France’s Nexter and Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, known as KNDS ; and Germany’s Rheinmetall.
The agreement foresees a central role for KNDS in the project.
During Friday’s joint press conference in Berlin, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecorne announced the agreement and praised the agreement as “historic,” bringing together two countries with comparable and competing defense industries in of a single major defense program.
For his part, Lecornou noted that bilateral work leads to “interoperability” for two nations that share a continent and are members of NATO.
Italy, the Netherlands and others have expressed interest in joining the MGCS program, Pistorius said in September after meeting with Lecornou to discuss the project.
Manufacturers are to develop the tank from scratch, the ministers said, with drones and directed-energy weapons bolstering the platform. These additional tank technologies are currently experimental.
The program aims to replace the German Leopard tanks and the French Leclerc fleet sometime in the 2040s, with a demonstrator expected around 2030. The French goal is to have a successor to the Leclerc main battle tank closer to 2040 rather than 2050 .
The future system will be much more than a successor to existing tanks, Lecornu said, describing the MGCS as a step beyond what exists today in terms of technology, with a “particularly impressive” level of innovation in terms of connectivity, electronic war, drone integration. armor and self-defense measures.
The countries have agreed on eight pillars under the program, each with a 50-50 share of work, including the tank platform, main weapon, new weapons, communications technology and combat-cloud system.
Germany will award contracts totaling up to several hundred million euros for the pre-demonstration phase by the end of the year. In addition to a major part for Nexter, the French stake is expected to include Thales, Safran and MBDA as well as smaller companies, while German companies beyond Krauss-Maffei Wegmann will include Rheinmetall and others.
France and Germany also said KNDS would set up a unit in Ukraine to produce local ammunition as well as spare parts for French and German systems used in the country. In time, it would be possible to produce entire systems in Ukrainesaid Lecornu.
KNDS systems operating in Ukraine include Leopard 2 tanks, the Caesar 155 mm wheeled howitzer, the PzH 2000 tracked gun and the Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.
Rudy Rutenberg is Defense News’ Europe correspondent. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
Sebastian Sprenger is deputy editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region and US-European cooperation and multinational investment in defense and global security. He previously served as managing editor of Defense News. It is based in Cologne, Germany.
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