With the association of the German family-controlled defense company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and the French state-run defense manufacturer Nexter Systems due to go into effect before the end of this year, many wonder whether the new joint holding KANT will help Germany bolster its stand on the European arms market.
The owners will each receive 50 percent of the shares of KANT, which will become the sole shareholder in KMW and Nexter. KANT is an acronym for KMW and Nexter Together.
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann currently leads the European market for highly protected wheeled and tracked vehicles, manufacturing, among other military hardware, the main German battle tank Leopard 2, the armored infantry carrier Puma, the armored personnel carrier Boxer and self-propelled artillery system PzH, which are superior to any existing serial analogues in the maximum range of fire.
The French company produces the country's main battle tank Leclerc, the infantry combat vehicle VBCI, the self-propelled artillery platform CAESAR, as well as the FAMAS rifles.
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann has already manufactured more than 3,000 Leopard 2 tanks, which are currently in service in the armies of at least nineteen countries.
As far as the new joint venture is concerned, the German company may well swallow Nexter Systems, which has faced a spate of financial problems in the past few years, and which supplied just 400 Leclerc tanks to the armed forces of France and the United Arab Emirates.
In this sense, foraying into the markets of those countries which already use the Leopard 2 tanks will be a formidable task for Nexter Systems, defense experts say, separately pointing to advanced characteristics of the self-propelled artillery system PzH.
This is why it is safe to say that the development of the KANT project will be dominated by Germany's influence, a process that at the same time will see the use of French technologies.
The gradual integration of the military industrial complex of Europe's largest arms producers is fully in line with the concept of the EU's unified Armed Forces.
This idea pops up from time to time and is as a rule voiced by representatives of Germany, who are doing its best to maximize their level of influence on European countries. The main reason for the creation of such a structure is nothing but an alleged "Russian threat."
But, of course, what the KANT project should really brace for is the planned breakthrough of the Russian-made state-of-the-art military hardware, including the Armata tank and the Kurganets-25 infantry combat vehicle into the global arms market after 2020.
