Key Points and Summary: Europe launched two parallel bids in December 2024 to build a next-generation main battle tank. Germany-led MARTE, headed by KNDS and Rheinmetall, unites partners from Italy, Sweden, the Baltics and others to design a Leopard 2 successor in 24 months.
-A separate EDF-funded effort, FMBTech, led by France’s Thales, will run 36 months and focus on a modular, AI-enabled MBT acting as the digital hub for unmanned teaming.
-Early targets point to under 70 tons, three-person crews with autoloaders, and 80 km/h road speed. But twin programs risk duplicate designs and costs—an enduring European problem that could blunt military benefits.
Coming Soon: MARTE and FMBTech
The MARTE project – shorthand for Main Armoured Tank of Europe – is an initiative launched in December 2024 to design, prototype, and build a next-generation tank for European countries. The project officially kicked off in December. It brings together leading defense companies from across Europe, including a number of European Union member states and Norway.
The project is headed by MARTE ARGE GbR, a joint venture between KNDS Deutschland GmbH & Co.KG and Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH, two of Germany’s defense company heavyweights. Leading defense companies from Italy, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, Italy, Belgium, Norway, Spain, Romania, Greece, The Netherlands, and Finland are involved.
Notably, neither France nor the United Kingdom is included in the MARTE initiative. Each operates its own domestic main battle tank, the Leclerc and Challenger 3, respectively.
In the funding award, the European Defense Fund (EDF) explained that “MARTE will study and design a new Main Battle Tank (MBT) platform that adequately meets current and future threats and needs, integrating innovative and disruptive technologies.”
The EDF added that the MARTE project will “further investigate the use of such technologies for upgrading current MBTs, when applicable. The project aims to offer superior protection, detection, and firepower capabilities, while enhancing the platform cost-effectiveness and lifecycle efficiency compared to existing MBT solutions.”
Germany’s presence in the project is significant. More specifically, the MARTE project will combine the knowledge of KNDS and Rheinmetall, both of which collaborate to build the Leopard 2 main battle tank, which is in service with several European countries as well as Canada, Chile, Turkey, and Indonesia. The Leopard 2 is also in service with Ukrainian forces, and is, of course, the backbone of the Bundeswehr’s armored forces.
Parallel Initiatives
In tandem with the MARTE project, the EDF also awarded a similar amount of money to another initiative, called FMBTech, which also aims to develop a next-generation main battle tank. France, and more specifically France’s Thales Group, appears to be taking the lead on the project.
The EDF award explains that FMBTech will “define and specify the best innovative technologies within a modular Main Battle Tank (MBT) system architecture.” It adds that the project “aims to enable existing and future European MBTs to achieve the highest operational effectiveness and mission success, in the frame of the future land combat scenarios, by delivering cutting edge through-life capabilities. The MBT will act as the center of a digitised capabilities envelope, giving enhanced ability to interface with unmanned systems and increased crew efficiency, thanks to artificial intelligence.”
This project heavily involves France, although other players in the European defense space, including firms from Poland, Czechia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ireland, are also involved. While the financial award from the EDF is virtually the same as that given to the MARTE project, FMBTech’s project duration is longer, at 36 months, compared to MARTE’s 24-month span.
According to Hartpunkt, a defense-focused website, the weight of both tanks should not exceed 70 tons. Each should have a crew of three – indicating a preference for an auto-loader rather than a fourth loader position – and have a minimum speed of 80 kilometers per hour, or about 50 miles per hour, on paved roads.
What Happens Now?
While the projects involve companies that have deep institutional knowledge and experience in defense development, developing the tanks in tandem runs the very real risk of inefficient duplicate designs.
When considered as a whole, the European defense industry is both well-funded and capable of building effective platforms, be they tanks, fighter jets, armored vehicles, or warships. In terms of capabilities, the European defense industry is, depending on the platform in question, either on par with the United States, or close to it.
However, these two competing projects highlight one of the European defense industry’s significant drawbacks: fragmented, disjointed national champions that fail to coordinate with other players in the defense sector. This reduces efficiency, as multiple firms pursue their projects without coordination.
Rather than funding two separate main battle tank projects, it would be far better to pool the European Defense Fund’s resources, as well as the institutional knowledge of Europe’s defense firms, to work together toward the same goal. In any case, it will be two to three years before either project begins to bear fruit.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
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