PARIS — KNDS, the maker of the Leopard 2 main battle tank, named Safran veteran Jean-Paul Alary as chief executive officer to replace Frank Haun, who will step down later this month at the end of his term.
Alary, 58, is currently CEO of Safran Aircraft Engines, and will take the helm at KNDS in April next year, the company said in a statement late Tuesday. Haun will quit his role on Dec. 15, with KNDS Chief Financial Officer Philippe Balducchi serving as interim CEO until Alary takes over at the French-German maker of heavy armor and artillery.
The new CEO’s challenges will include ramping up production to meet surging European demand for tanks and cannons, with the KNDS order book more than doubling last year to €15.7 billion ($16.5 billion). Alary will also oversee first development orders for the Main Ground Combat System, a politically fraught Franco-German project for a future battle tank that’s already more than five years delayed.
“With Jean-Paul Alary, KNDS could win an outstanding expert in technology and management,” KNDS Chairman Philippe Petitcolin said in a statement. “He will further drive KNDS’s innovational power and economic growth.”
With a Frenchman taking over as CEO, the chairman job at KNDS will be filled by a German, according to French newspaper Les Echos, which said Wolfgang Büchele, the former CEO of Linde and Exyte, will replace Petitcolin.
KNDS in April reported its 2023 order intake increased more than 130%, which the company said was the strongest growth among the 15 largest European defense firms. Order intake of €7.8 billion was driven by the Leopard 2A8 main battle tank program, infantry fighting vehicles, Caesar howitzers and a growing need for ammunition, according to the company.
“The defense industry is facing challenging yet opportunity-rich times,” Alary said in a statement. “I look forward to actively shaping these developments as the CEO of KNDS.”
Alary is a graduate of the elite French engineering school CentraleSupélec, and started his career as an engineer at Safran in 1991. He became CEO of Safran Nacelles in 2015 and of the landing systems division in 2018, working under then-Safran CEO Petitcolin, and took charge of the aircraft engine business in 2020.
Safran in November named Stéphane Cueille to head the engine business starting in the first months of 2025, with the company saying Alary had decided to pursue his career outside the group.
KNDS was formed by the 2015 combination of Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and France’s Nexter, and the product portfolio is still split between competing vehicles developed by the French and German predecessor companies. While cooperation between KNDS France and KNDS Deutschland is progressing, the companies were rivals for decades, and real consolidation will require joint projects, Petitcolin said in June.
The company is working with rival Rheinmetall and defense-electronics maker Thales on the MGCS program, which is set to replace France’s Leclerc tanks and Germany’s Leopard tanks some time in the 2040s. Setting up the joint project company “is taking a bit of time,” meaning first development orders will probably be later in 2025 rather than early, Emmanuel Chiva, the head of France’s armaments agency, said in October.
France and Germany signed a letter of intent to develop of a main battle tank in 2018 and gave the go-ahead for an initial architecture study two years later, with the aim at the time to have a successor for the Leopard 2 and Leclerc starting in 2035.
European countries have more than 2,000 Leopard 2 tanks in their inventory, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. With the MGCS now expected in the middle of the 2040s if not later, both KNDS and Rheinmetall are looking to fill the gap, showing off improved tank designs at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris in June.
Despite cooperation on the MGCS project, Alary will face a Rheinmetall that has been aggressively challenging KNDS for tank business in Europe. Rheinmetall won a €288 million contract from Hungary in December 2023 to develop the Panther KF51 to production maturity, and the company in October established a joint venture with Leonardo to build tanks and infantry fighting vehicles for Italy, with the KF51 the basis for a design to replace Italy’s Ariete tanks.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
