BERLIN: The defense ministers of Germany and France declared on March 22 that their industries will contribute equally to the development and production of a future tank.

The Main Ground Combat System agreement, which will be formalized as a memorandum of understanding in late April, ends years of negotiations over national preferences for the two main industry players: Germany’s Rheinmetall and the joint venture of Nexter and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, known as KNDS, which is a joint venture between France and Germany.

Leclerc tanks are operated by French soldiers; the nation intends to replace them with the Main Ground Combat System.

According to the agreement, KNDS will play a major part in the project.

The agreement, which unites two nations with similar and rivalry defense industries under a single major defense program, was announced and hailed as “historic” during a joint news conference held in Berlin on Friday by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his French counterpart Sébastien Lecornu.

Lecornu, for his part, pointed out that the bilateral collaboration results in “interoperability” for two NATO members that share a continent.

Italy, the Netherlands and others have expressed interest in joining the MGCS program, Pistorius said in September after a meeting with Lecornu to discuss the project.

Manufacturers are to develop the tank from scratch, the ministers said, with drones and directed-energy weapons augmenting the platform. Those additional technologies for the tank are currently experimental.

The program aims to replace Germany’s Leopard tanks and France’s Leclerc fleet sometime in the 2040s, with a demonstrator expected around 2030. The French target is to have a successor to its Leclerc main battle tank closer to 2040 than 2050, though.

The future system will be much more than a successor to existing tanks, Lecornu said, describing the MGCS as a step beyond what exists today in terms of technology, with a “particularly impressive” level of innovation regarding connectivity, electronic warfare, drone integration, armor and self-defensive measures.

The countries have agreed on eight pillars within the program, each with a 50-50 work share, including the tank platform, main gun, new weapons, communication technology and combat-cloud system.

Germany will award contracts for a total of up to several hundred million euros for the pre-demonstrator phase by the end of the year. In addition to a significant part for Nexter, the French share is expected to include Thales, Safran and MBDA as well as smaller firms, while German companies beyond Krauss-Maffei Wegmann will include Rheinmetall and others.

France and Germany also said KNDS will create a unit in Ukraine to locally produce ammunition as well as spare parts for French and German systems in use in the country. In time, there would be a possibility to produce entire systems in Ukraine, Lecornu said.

KNDS systems operating in Ukraine include Leopard 2 tanks, the wheeled Caesar 155mm howitzer, the tracked PzH 2000 howitzer and the Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.