Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) has arrived in France to agree on a central arms project worth billions. The minister landed in Paris on Friday to sign a memorandum of understanding with his counterpart Sébastien Lecornu on the joint construction of the land combat system of the future.

In the future, it will connect battle tanks in a data network with support weapons such as drones and other unmanned systems, thus enabling a leap in military technology.

The weapon system known as the "Main Ground Combat System" (MGCS), in which Germany will play a leading role, is the counterpart to the air combat system of the future (FCAS), which is led by France. It is to follow the Leopard and Leclerc battle tanks. Industrial distribution battles had led to delays and tensions between Berlin and Paris. In May 2021, after an industrial policy struggle, Germany, France and Spain had already reached a "basic agreement" on the multi-billion dollar FCAS air combat system.

“Generational leap” and “historical”

Lecornu said in Berlin in March that the main battle tank system would be a “generational leap”. Pistorius had described the agreement in principle as “historic” and said: “We have agreed on the distribution of all tasks for this major project.” However, the details have not yet been published.

It is expected with interest whether and how the distribution of industrial tasks will be regulated. In the FCAS air combat system, this was done in columns (“pillars”) to which individual tasks were assigned. When it comes to weapons systems, an important question is whether they are uniform and therefore ammunition can be exchanged and produced together. In the past, there have been repeated difficulties with joint armaments projects because individual nations insisted on special technical requests, which resulted in delays and cost increases.