BERLIN, September 6 (Reuters) – Germany has signed agreements with Italy, Spain and Sweden to develop a successor to the Leopard 2 tank, Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.
The project will be overseen by German arms manufacturers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall, which produce the Leopard 2, Handelsblatt says, citing industry and policy sources.
The partners of this initiative intend to apply to the European Defense Fund to find funding of the order of several hundred million euros, writes Handelsblatt, adding that the project should also involve the Swedish Saab and the Italian Leonardo.
The Spanish partner has not been identified.
A spokesperson for Rheinmetall did not respond to a request for comment. KMW could not immediately be reached.
If confirmed, this initiative could provoke the anger of France, which launched six years ago with Berlin the “tank of the future” project (MGCS, Main Ground Combat System), which aims to replace the Leopard 2 and the French tank Leclerc by 2040, a project hampered for months by disagreements between Paris and Berlin.
The MGCS project has however been relaunched on several occasions, in particular last July when the French Armed Forces and German Defense Ministers instructed their Armed Forces Chiefs of Staff to prepare a document by the end of the year preparatory on the capabilities of the future tank.
According to the Handelsblatt however, Paris and Berlin did not manage to agree on the characteristics of the tank, France advocating the construction of a rather light vehicle while Germany would like to opt for a heavier armored vehicle.
Neither the Elysée nor the Ministry of the Armed Forces responded immediately to a request for comment.
The German Defense Ministry also did not respond to a request for comment. (Friederike Heine and Sabine Siebold, with Michel Rose in Paris, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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