![]() ![]() Ralf Ketzel, who leads Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, told the Münchner Merkur newspaper in August that “nobody has spoken with us about the financial requirements.” Rheinmetall is similarly taking a wait-and-see approach. By the end of the year, officials plan to digest the ideas into a single document that Macron and now-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz can use to chart a course.įrom there, industry executives have said the onus is on the two governments to convey everything from cost expectations to envisioned performance features. In the case of the new tank, the two nations’ army chiefs are expected to come up with a kind of vision paper for the vehicle before the next Pistorius-Lecornu meeting scheduled for Sept. That includes the so-called pillar design - groupings of discrete capabilities like propulsion or sensors, each led by one company and supported by a smattering of subcontractors - that could be harvested even if the overall program fails. Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall are Germany’s Leopard vendors Nexter is the prime contractor for the French Leclerc.īut besides proclaiming a new can-do attitude and the pledge to meet again this month, there was little to announce in Berlin other than the fact there is now a mutual understanding that Germany will lead the tank program while France spearheads the warplane push, known as the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS.ĭefense officials from both countries now hope experience with the FCAS program’s structure and workshare arrangements, however shaky, can propel the tank program forward. French officials had been wary that the inclusion of Germany’s Rheinmetall into the contractor pool, led by KNDS (a German-Franco joint venture of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Nexter), would make the project lean too Teutonic. Speaking to reporters in Berlin this summer, Pistorius and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu said they were ready to turn the page after a drawn-out workshare distribution kerfuffle paralyzed the program. While the warplane program limped along, the tank initiative simply went quiet. Neither project went according to plan, as the initial top-level enthusiasm gave way to industrial and political infighting over the question of which country, and which company, would lead them. The duo of then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled two major military projects - a new tank and a new warplane - intended to underpin Europe’s newfound defense ambitions with hundreds of billions of euros over their life cycles. The idea hails from 2017, the heyday of the Berlin-Paris connection. It is meant to replace the Leopard 2 and Leclerc fleets in Germany and France, respectively, beginning sometime between 20. MGCS - a system of systems, in military speak - entails a novel main battle tank, accompanied by robots and enhanced by artificial intelligence. As German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius put it, the question is the “load bearing capacity” of a French-German armament program in the first place. The stakes are high, essentially setting up yet another case study to see if European leaders can shake their national vanities and come up with a next-level weapon system. After years of inaction, leaders from both countries are now vowing to make their vision for the Main Ground Combat System, or MGCS, a reality. Indeed, Ukrainian leaders long had modern tanks near the top of their wish list of military equipment, though some Western officials tried to temper expectations that the steel behemoths’ arrival alone would yield miracles on the battlefield.Īs the war draws new attention to the power and promise of the ground platforms, German and French officials are moving to reignite a joint next-generation tank program, perhaps one of the most high-profile illustrations of a renewed push for defense cooperation in Europe. ![]() This support for Kyiv has injected an almost mythical expectation into the tank as a guarantor of victory. ![]() Conventional military lore holds that when faced with tanks on the battlefield, you’d better have your own.Īnd while it took more than a year, soon European and American tanks headed to the Ukrainian battlefield. 24, 2022, when Russian tanks lined up to invade Ukraine. ![]() COLOGNE and STUTTGART, Germany - Tanks had fallen somewhat out of fashion - that is, before Feb. ![]()
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