After years of industrial rivalry, the agreement signed today by German Minister Boris Pistorius and his counterpart Sébastien Lecornu, responsible for this cooperation project since last year, focuses on the equal distribution between manufacturers of the two countries in the creation process of this new model of combat vehicle.

"At the beginning of the project, there was a vision. Between the vision and the realization, of course, there was a lot of time and a lot of effort, but today's signature is a real milestone," said Boris Pistorius at a press conference.

The defense cooperation program launched in 2017 aims to replace the current war tanks, the French Leclerc and the German Leopard 2, by 2040, instead of 2035, the date initially stipulated.

Funded in equal parts by Paris and Berlin and conducted under German management, the program was initially led only by KNDS, an entity created by the companies Nexter and KMW, manufacturers of the Leclerc and Leopard 2 tanks, respectively.

In 2019, the arrival of the German manufacturer Rheinmetall destabilized the structure and the planned divisions between the manufacturers.

To overcome the impasse, "it was necessary to start from the operational needs of the two land armies", ratified last September, as explained by Sébastien Lecornu, at the same press conference.

The agreement, reached after tough negotiations, defines the manufacturer of each of the eight pillars to be developed in the project, including platforms, turrets and cannons, innovative fires (such as missiles and directed energy weapons), communications or simulation.

The ministers did not go into details about the division, but revealed that a negotiation phase is being initiated with the industry to develop the MGCS demonstrator, a kind of pre-prototype to test the technological building blocks, which will be manufactured at the end of the decade.

Currently, "the goal is to have contracts in place by the end of the year, which is very ambitious," said Boris Pistorius.

Until then, the manufacturers KNDS and Rheinmetall, as well as many other companies from the two countries, should reach an agreement on the exact distribution of responsibilities and the modalities of information exchange, as well as the creation of a specific industrial organization.

At a time when Italy and other European countries intend to join the project, it will be open to partners sooner than expected, "but it is necessary that the contracts between the French and German manufacturers are already concluded", continued Boris Pistorius.

More than a traditional war tank, the MGCS is a "system of systems", as highlighted by Sébastien Lecornu, mentioning some of the characteristics of the combat vehicle, namely the fact that it is integrated by other vehicles, manned or not, which present great technological advances (Artificial Intelligence, 'drones' to protect the tank, lasers, among others).

For the French minister, this military equipment "is not the tank of the future, but the future of the tank (...). We are the first nations to look at this era of 2040 in terms of cavalry and armored vehicles".

According to Lecornu, the Franco-German project is the most advanced, since "the Americans have not yet started to think" about the successor to the Abrams tank and the Russians "failed" with their T-14 Armata tank.

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