In February 1997, Mikhail Kalashnikov, as a participant of the Russian delegation, took part in an international symposium in Germany. On one of the last days of the trip, he managed to visit France and see the open-air museum complex “Maginot Line”. This was the name of the 750-kilometers long French fortification system, built on the border with Germany in 1929–1934 and protecting Alsace and Lorraine — the lands given to France after the First World War.

Kalashnikov recalled about this trip,

In the museum, Kalashnikov was given a box with the image of the French AMX-56 Leclerc tank of the GIAT concern.

The GIAT Group of Enterprises for the ground weapons production was established in 1973 with the support of the French Ministry of Defense. Its main production was based in Rouen, Loire department. After the collapse of the joint Franco-German program for the development of a unified tank based on the Leopard-2 in 1979, France began implementing a national project.

The GIAT created the AMX-56 tank model in 1986 as a replacement for the outdated AMX-30 tank. The French designers provided the novelty with an automatic loader, which allowed to reduce the crew to three people and significantly reduce the mass of armor, by about 7 tons in comparison with tanks of other countries. At the same time, the safety of the crew remained high, and the mobility of the car increased. This was an atypical solution for NATO vehicles, but characteristic of the Soviet school of tank construction.

In 1991, the GIAT was nationalized by the state. Mass production of the AMX-56 Leclerc model began in 1992. On September 2, 2006, the GIAT became the core of the new Nexter company. The main tank of the French army Leclerc and its variants have become one of the most famous products of the concern. In 2015, the enterprise presented a program for the modernization of the manufactured tanks up to 2040.