Knds

Military land systems, the Leclerc XLR tank, CAESAR artillery, and VBMR Griffon vehicles, are the business of KNDS France, a leading European maker. First founded in 1973 as GIAT Industries and known as Nexter Systems from 2006 until April 2024, it sits in Versailles as a core division of KNDS, formed by the 2015 merger with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann. With 4,500 employees and more than 2,500 patents, it serves over 100 armies worldwide and puts 13% of turnover into R&D for robotics, AI, and battlefield digitization. ISO 9001:2015 certified, it leads the SCORPION program and the MGCS tank project and deploys systems such as STRADOT conveyor robots and CENTURIO. In 2025 it opened a Kiev maintenance subsidiary and planned 155mm shell production, with recent contracts including 109 CAESAR MkII units (400M euros) and 100 Leclerc XLR renovations by 2035.