KNDS proposes mixed French-German tank to replace France’s Leclerc
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PARIS — KNDS is proposing a main battle tank with a turret and gun developed in France and mounted on the hull of Germany’s Leopard 2 as an intermediate solution to replace the French Army’s aging Leclerc tanks, which are expected to reach the end of their service life before the arrival of a next-generation tank.The tank proposal unveiled at the Eurosatory defense show on Monday featured an unmanned turret with a 120mm auto-loader smoothbore gun developed by KNDS France, with the possibility of upgrading the cannon to 140mm. KNDS said it aims to deliver the first units of the tank, dubbed Capint, short for intermediate capability, in the 2030s.With the French-German project to develop the Main Ground Combat System delayed and not expected to arrive until the mid-2040s, France will need a replacement for its Leclerc tank somewhere in the next decade. The country intends for the interim capability to be a building block of MGCS, Gen. Olivier Coquet, head of the French Army’s technical section, said on Sunday.“We are already working to create what will be the combat of tomorrow,” KNDS CEO Jean-Paul Alary said in a press conference at the defense show outside Paris on Monday. “Maybe the combat of tomorrow, the ambition of MGCS, will come a little bit earlier than the project itself.”French army shows Leclerc tank with once-mocked anti-drone cageThe goal is to present France’s Directorate General for Armament with a demonstrator tank as early as 2030 and deliver the first production units in 2035, followed by deployment to the forces in 2037, said Julien Brunet, product line manager for main battle tanks and reconnaissance vehicles at KNDS France, in a separate briefing.The proposed tank already represents the beginnings of a fourth-generation combat system, according to Brunet, who described such a platform as one with fully integrated AI, a combination of passive, reactive and active protection, counter-drone warfare and the ability to engage beyond line of sight.The