SKYLD SECURITY AND DEFENCE LTD is pleased to share the first newsletter of the FMBTech project, in which SKYLD participates as a member of the European consortium. FMBTech is a European Defence Fund project focused on advancing technologies for existing and future Main Battle Tanks (MBTs), supporting Europe’s efforts to strengthen innovation, interoperability and industrial cooperation in the land defence domain.
The first FMBTech newsletter introduces the project’s vision and presents recent progress across the consortium. It highlights how FMBTech is working on innovative and modular technologies aimed at improving operational effectiveness, safety, interoperability and long-term adaptability for current and future MBT systems. The newsletter also underlines the role of advanced sensing, digital architectures and ethical AI in supporting Europe’s technological leadership in the ground warfare domain.
This first issue includes a message from the Project Coordinator, Thales SIX, presenting the project’s strategic direction and explaining the progress achieved during the initial phase of the project. According to the newsletter, the consortium has completed important work on user requirements, Concepts of Operations, business cases and a unified framework consolidating more than 400 initial requirements and CONOPs. The project has now moved into a second phase focused on technology surveying, functional description, subsystem decomposition and compliance traceability.
The newsletter also features project highlights from Safran, presenting technical developments related to the identification of technological building blocks for future tank architectures and upgrades for current tanks. In addition, it includes an interview with COL (Ret.) Vincent Sassel, ethical expert for the FMBTech consortium, who discusses the importance of embedding ethics, meaningful human control and accountability from the earliest stages of system design.
Another key section of the newsletter presents reflections from the FMBTech roundtable in Brussels, titled “The Role of the Main Battle Tank on the Battlefield: Legacy or Essential?”. The discussion brought together representatives from the FMBTech consortium, EU institutions, NATO, national armed forces and academia, focusing on the future role of MBTs as part of wider system-of-systems and multi-domain operational environments.
SKYLD invites stakeholders, partners and the wider defence community to read the first FMBTech newsletter and follow the project’s progress as it continues to contribute to the future of European armoured capabilities.
Read the FMBTech newsletter: Be part of the FMBTech network: Insights on Europe’s next-generation Main Battle Tank
