Since the beginning of the russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, France has been providing a variety of weapons and military equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It includes the "Akeron MP" anti-tank missile system, the supply of this weapon has not been revealed until recently.
The details were disclosed by Vice-President of the French National Defence and Armed Forces Committee Jean-Louis Thiériot in an interview to Opex News. He pointed out that the weapons provided by France, including the Akeron MP as well as the CAESAR howitzers and Mistral missiles, "do a very good job" in Ukraine.
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The Akeron MP anti-tank missile was adopted by the French military in 2017 and was supposed to replace the Milan and Javelin ATGMs. It is designed to be used both by infantry and mounted on various combat vehicles. Akeron MP has a firing range of 5 km.
In addition, we also have news from Jean-Dominique Merchet, journalist and defense columnist from L'Opinion. According to him, France has a number of decommissioned AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicles and is preparing to send 25 of them to Ukraine.
This vehicle was developed in 1965–1972 and mass-produced from 1972 to 1994. In 2008, the French military began a process of replacing the aging AMX-10P with new wheeled VBCI combat vehicle, which was completed in 2015.
Public data indicates that the total number of AMX-10P in French stocks as of 2011 is 331 units. Merchet says, most of them were scrapped, but there are still some combat-capable, and those could be supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The primary weapon of AMX-10P is a two-person turret Toucan II with a 20mm M693 F1 autocannon and a 7.62mm machine gun. There are also versions with a 25mm or a 90mm gun (these were mostly sold to Indonesia and Singapore) and ATGM launchers. The variant armed with the 20mm gun can destroy a target at a distance of 1,500 m with a rate of fire of 700 rounds per minute.
The vehicle's armor protects from 7.62mm bullets, and the frontal armor withstands as well 14.5mm projectiles of a KPVT machine gun and 23mm rounds of a ZU-23-2 gun. In 2006-2008, about a hundred of AMX-10P received an armor upgrade and got equipped with applique armor.
Mobility is provided by a Hispano-Suiza HS 115 diesel engine with power output 280 hp. Road speed can reach 65 km/h, or 7 km/h when crossing a water obstacle. Crew is three people, and up to eight in the landing compartment.
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