The next self-propelled artillery system to be acquired by Morocco will be Israeli, and not French as expected. The Israeli firm Elbit Systems has won the contract for 36 pieces of this type of weaponry for the Royal Moroccan Army, with its Atmos 2000 model mounted on trucks from the Czech firm Tatra.
Rabat ordered an initial batch of 36 Caesar self-propelled artillery systems at the beginning of 2020, developed by the French firm Nexter (now part of the current KNDS), so it was estimated that a new order would also correspond to this model. However, in the end this has not happened.
According to sources familiar with the operation collected by the French financial media La Tribune, a series of problems detected since the first Caesars began to arrive in Morocco in 2022 have weighed on the purchase of the platform from Israel, a country with which Rabat has been strengthening important military ties in recent years. KNDS France (heir to Nexter’s share of the new Franco-German firm KNDS) has not responded with sufficient diligence to Moroccan complaints about the systems received, which has been used by Elbit Systems to place its Atmos 2000.
This operation shows the change of course that is taking place in the field of Moroccan arms acquisitions, where France has been occupying a leading position that it is losing. This has recently happened with acquisitions as important as that of the F-16 fighter jets ordered from the United States, instead of the French Rafale that had initially been contemplated, which has been a major setback for French industry.