France and Germany sign agreement on the tank of the “future”

France and Germany They signed this Friday in Paris an agreement to activate the development phase of a demonstrator of its future tank, the MGCS, after managing to establish the distribution of tasks between industrialists from both countries.

The Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) is called to replace the French Leclerc and German Leopard tanks by 2040, as a “system of systems”.

This battle tank will have important technological advances (artificial intelligence, drones, lasers…). “It is not the tank of the future, but the future of the tank,” celebrated the French Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu.

But, since 2017, this emblematic project of cooperation between both European countries was stalled due to rivalries between industrialists and differences over military needs.

Seven years later, Lecornu and his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, put an end to these disagreements with the signing of a protocol that distributes fifty% between manufacturers from both countries the work of developing a demonstrator.

“At the beginning of the project, there was a vision. Between the vision and its realization, obviously, a lot of time and effort was invested, but today’s signing is truly a milestone.”celebrated the German.

The MGCS, financed equally by Paris and Berlin, is led by KNDS, an entity formed by the French group Nexter, manufacturer of the Leclerc, and the German KMW, which builds the Leopard 2.

But the emergence in 2019 of the German manufacturer Rheinmetall forced the planned distribution to be reviewed. The signed agreement designates an industrialist responsible for most of the eight pillars to be developed.

After the agreement, a negotiation phase begins with the manufacturers to develop the MGCS demonstrator, a kind of initial prototype. “The goal is to have the contracts by the end of the year,” Pistorius pointed out.