Paris and Berlin officially launch the "future tank" program
Sébastien Lecornu, the French Minister of the Armed Forces, and his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, signed on Friday in Paris the commitment agreement sealing the collaboration of the two countries for the "future tank" program, which enters its so-called "1A" phase.
Boris Pistorius explained during a joint press conference with the French minister that the objective was to secure contracts by the end of the year.
Sébastien Lecornu mentioned Rheinmetall RHMG.DE, Thales TCFP.PA, and KNDS, the holding formed since 2015 by the French Nexter and the German Krauss Maffei Wegmann (KMW), among the companies that could be approached for the MGCS (Main Ground Combat System).
The agreement signed on Friday concerns Phase 1A of the project, which involves designing a "demonstrator," in other words, a pre-prototype.
The MGCS program, estimated to cost around 100 billion euros, was jointly launched in 2017 by Paris and Berlin, alongside the Scaf, the "future combat aircraft," which is progressing slowly. Spain later joined the two partners in this latter project.
The MGCS aims to replace the German Leopard 2 tanks and the French Leclerc tanks.
"In the 2040s, it will be time for two neighboring countries, friends, members of the European Union and NATO, to obviously have a fully functional armored cavalry framework," said Sébastien Lecornu, who welcomed his counterpart at the Hôtel de Brienne.
He mentioned a "technological breakthrough" at a time "when our American friends have not started to think about post-Abrams" and where "the Russians are facing major difficulties in breaking with the current generation of tanks."
According to him, France and Germany are "the first nations to be concerned about this 2040 era in terms of cavalry and armored vehicles."
After signing a common roadmap last September, the two ministers announced in March during a meeting in Berlin an agreement on the division of tasks between the two countries for this ambitious project, the completion of which is set for the horizon 2040-2045.
