On April 26, French Armed Forces Minister Sebastian Lecornu and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius announced that their respective countries had formalized an agreement to develop a next-generation battle tank system.
According to DefenseNews, Germany will be leading the initiative and will be awarding contracts for the first “demonstrator phase” by the end of the year.
Leaders in the Bundeswehr, the German Armed Forces, are pushing for the design of the tank system to be modular, allowing for a large degree of specialization.
According to Lecornu, the work will be split equally between French and German industries.
In response to the announcement, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the joint initiative between the two nations is “something we very much welcome”.
The development of the next-generation battle tank system will be comprised of eight areas of focused development, from the turret and gun systems to electronic warfare capabilities.
According to a Bundeswehr statement on the project, it is highly likely that the tank system will utilize a “hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system”.
This comes as countries across Europe have heavily reinvested in their national defense industries due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
