Germany’s national competition authority, the Federal Cartel Office, has approved the establishment of a joint venture between KNDS Deutschland, KNDS France, Rheinmetall and THALES to develop a new generation MGCS tank.

This was reported by the Federal Ministry of Defense of Germany.

The MGCS-Project Company will be headquartered in Germany. The main goal of the joint venture is to develop the MGCS tank in the framework of German-French cooperation. The sole customers of the joint venture will be the governments of Germany and France.

“The geopolitical situation has a direct impact on the defense industry. We are increasingly seeing cooperation projects between different European companies, which can also have competitive consequences. An important aspect in our assessment of such projects is whether the companies could implement the project independently. According to our research, this is not the case here – rather, the previous areas of activity of Rheinmetall and KNDS are largely complementary. In addition, the companies are competing with other strong companies in the development and production of armored vehicles,” said Andreas Mundt, President of the Federal Cartel Office.

MGCS

MGCS is a project launched in 2017 by Germany and France to replace their current main battle tanks, the Leopard 2 and Leclerc.

The program is supposed to develop a universal platform on the basis of which other vehicles will be built in addition to the tank. In particular, the prototypes of an artillery unit and a heavy armored personnel carrier were presented on a number of models.

For the Eurosatory exhibition in 2022, KNDS presented the MGCS technology demonstrator, which, although it cannot be considered a prototype at this stage, still depicts the vision of the future vehicle. In fact, the presented vehicle is a deeply modified combat compartment of the French Leclerc tank on the Leopard 2A7 chassis.

According to the plan, the new tank should be equipped with a 140/120 mm bi-caliber ASCALON tank gun. In January 2025, the first video of the test firing of this gun was published.

The special design of this gun provides for the possibility of quickly replacing the 140 mm barrel with a 120 mm barrel. At the same time, the same breech is used for both calibers.

From the very beginning, the project was in crisis due to a number of serious disagreements between the two governments on the distribution of production and the vision of the new machine.

However, in March 2024, the German and French governments reached a breakthrough in how this future tank will be developed. The participants distributed tasks and responsibilities for the development of the combat platform among themselves. The parties agreed to evenly distribute the industrial output between the two countries.

The first combat vehicle developed under the project is expected to roll off the assembly line in 2035.