LEurope’s defense is a constant battle – often between Europeans themselves. The victories are won by hard struggle. Defeats each time raise the question of the political will of States. Particularly that of France and Germany, whose priority remains NATO and its arms industry, without any concern for a chimerical “strategic autonomy” of the Old Continent dear to the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron. Tensions are crystallizing today around a major program: the land combat system, the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS).
Supposed to replace the French Leclerc and German Leopard tanks by 2040, the MGCS is a system of armored vehicles, drones and connected robots which “will look nothing like the tanks we know today”according to the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu.
Under study for six years within the Franco-German joint venture KNDS made up of Nexter and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), joined by the Düsseldorf giant Rheinmetall, it has lead in its armor. The shots come from the other side of the Rhine, where industrialists and parliamentarians weigh much more heavily than in France in defense policy.
Rheinmetall wants to impose its choices. And elected officials from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are calling for the MGCS to be abandoned. “Saving time, money and nerves! And we know what we have! #MGCS »released on X (ex-Twitter) one of the members of the budget and defense committee of the Bundestag, Andreas Schwarz.
The war in Ukraine put armored vehicles back at the heart of the war and the needs of the Bundeswehr pushed the Germans to develop the Leopard 2A8, then the 2AX version. In 2022, they also presented at the Eurosatory global arms exhibition a more advanced prototype, the Panther KF51; and they have just joined forces with Spain, Italy and Sweden to study, with European funds, new technological bricks for armored vehicles, without Nexter.
Multi-role device
The MGCS and this initiative ” to complement each other “tempered the German Minister of Defense, Thursday September 7, in the South German Zeitung, before his visit to the French air base of Evreux, scheduled for September 22. Boris Pistorius will have a lot of work to do to convince that Germany really wants to continue the program. When Paris cultivates the political symbolism of the Franco-German “couple” and plans for the long term, Berlin responds politely, but favors its short-term interests and operational efficiency.
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