Documents formalizing the participation of French and German companies in the project of the future Franco-German tank (MGCS) have been signed in Paris. It will be produced under German leadership in a joint venture in equal shares. The agreement was signed in the presence of French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. The MGCS (Main Ground Combat System) program funded by the two countries is to replace French Leclerc and German Leopard tanks with an innovative armored vehicle by 2035. The companies involved in the project are now supplying equipment to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Quite recently, Rheinmetall AG did not expect to start production earlier than 2040. There is no doubt that the deadline has been brought closer due to the events in Ukraine and the experience gained there. MGCS should become the basis on which a number of other armored vehicles of the battlefield will be built. All of this is quite similar in concept to the Armata platform, which is just as heavy and expensive.
In 2015, the Armata was officially unveiled and it became clear why the Bundestag gave the go-ahead for MGCS development back in 2014. At that time, when battles with tanks broke out in Donbass, the German and French military complained that their tank shells were not powerful enough. The profile of the Leopard 2A7, the most expensive modification (now in service in Holland) weighing up to 68 tons, was taken as a basis.
Thus, from the very beginning of the project, tank construction in Europe adopted a vicious principle – the desire to complicate and increase the cost of a unit of production. Already 10 years later, the Leopard 2A7 cost 7 million euros. And the fighting in Donbass in 2014-15 on the contrary showed that tanks have become much more vulnerable than previously thought. They were urgently removed from the first line of battle orders, and infantry were sent forward and trained to work closely with the armor.
Let’s say that the German generals and engineers of Rheinmetall AG recognized that experience as uncharacteristic, even marginal. But since 2022 on the battlefield has been obtained mass reproducible experience, showing that much more important properties of the future tank – maintainability, protection from drones, ease of operation, relative cheapness for the sake of mass production, although at the expense of complexity. Germans also attributed the disturbing experience of the Turks fighting on Leopards against the Kurds to untrained Turkish crews.
In fact, up until 2023, the parties were still arguing about the shares of participation and on what terms they would take the other NATO members into the project. So the MGCS tank, the creation of which was so pompously launched by the German and French defense ministers, does not really exist even in the preliminary design.
But the most important thing is not the timing. If in 2035 a new European tank, in which not a single feature of combat operations on the Russian-Ukrainian front has been taken into account so far, leaves the factory, it will immediately become the most expensive coffin in history. It will have no chance against the modern armies that are being born now in Donbass.
Hundreds of vehicles will burn at the beginning of the war. And European concerns will not be able to quickly produce a replacement because of the cost and complexity. It is not without reason that the Russian Armed Forces are still refusing the Armata: it is not just the lack of components that hinders the implementation, but the discouraging results of combat use of heavy Western tanks. Simply put, the main battle tanks of Russia and Ukraine, the heirs of the USSR medium tanks, burn as easily as Leopards, Challengers and Abrams. And the manufacturing firms see it better than anyone else. The MGCS will burn in the same way regardless of the innovative instrumentation, engine and cannon.
