Germany withdraws from joint project with France to develop the MGCS tank

Germany has decided to withdraw from the joint project with France to create the MGCS (Main Ground Combat System) tank of the future.

This was announced by the Chief of the French Armed Forces General Staff, Fabien Mandon, on Thursday at hearings in the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament).

"This is not a complete failure, this is an important choice by Germany. Our ground forces have for several years jointly developed the concept of the future combat tank," the BFMTV channel quoted him as saying. "The basic principles for creating the tank have been approved, this work was not in vain," Mandon said, while acknowledging that "from an industrial point of view this is not very good news."

As BFMTV writes, the MGCS project was accompanied by constant delays and disagreements among the participants. The contradictions concerned the distribution of tasks between French and German companies, the financing of the program, and the choice of technologies, as a result of which the implementation schedule gradually shifted.

The channel also notes that Germany's withdrawal from the project came four months after the closure of the Franco-German project to create the new-generation European fighter jet FCAS (Future Combat Air System), the development of which was halted in the summer of 2026.

The MGCS project was launched in 2017 to develop a main battle tank that would replace the Leclerc in the French army and the Leopard 2 tanks in the German army. However, as Agence France-Presse notes, after Germany's Rheinmetall joined the project in 2019, development slowed due to industrial and political disagreements between the French and German participants. In addition, German companies are working on their own Leopard 3 tank, the first examples of which are planned to enter service in the early 2030s, while the MGCS tank was not expected to reach combat readiness before the 2040s.

Source: TASS