In this year (2021) in which we celebrate 100 Years of Armored Vehicles in the Brazilian Army, we are once again needing to renew our tank fleet and the studies for this demand are being materialized through the Nova Couraça (new armour) that provides not only tanks but also several others types of armored vehicles on wheels and tracks. With a bid for foreign companies, with a modest participation of national companies, to be able to offer what will be able to serve us based on our technical and operational requirements, and which will have a large number of offers from the different countries, at a time when our Defense Industrial Base may not be able to provide an answer as it was done in the golden years of the 1970s to 1990s, when we managed to develop a lot of material that could have given us great independence in the area of Defense.

Its defense industry, after this period of initial development, obtained critical fundamental technologies and a relative commercial success. Its main companies of the sector signed development, production and export contracts with several Latin American, European, African and Asian countries. The most important was the interaction between this group and Brazilian companies, and some multinationals, that materialized the first dreams for a new reality, until then new in the country.

We need to analyze the great interactivity between national and multinational industries and the Armed Forces that, at the time, transformed the country into a producer of defense material for its use and for export.

Mistakes and successes were made with the development of technologies that, in most cases, cannot simply be bought. This is for the simple reason that whoever owns them does not teach them how to master the development and construction, creating terrible dependence.

This book aims to show the mistakes and successes throughout this Centenary.