On a visit to Kyiv on Thursday, Oleksii Makeiev, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany, quantified the extent of air defense support received from Berlin since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion during an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
He said that Germany had already delivered more than 60 Flakpanzer Gepard (Cheetah) self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAG) and seven IRIS-T air defense missile systems, with an eighth on the way, along with more than 650 IRIS-T missiles.
He said with humor: “We were given more than 60 ‘cheetahs.’ That is, most of the ‘cheetahs’ that could be caught in the forests of the world have already been caught – and they are grazing on Ukrainian pastures.”
Gepard was first fielded in the 1970s and has been upgraded several times by the addition of the latest electronics, radars, and fire control systems. It was phased out of service with the Bundeswehr in 2010 but was still seeing service in NATO and several other countries – several of which were recovered from users such as Jordan and refurbished by the original manufacturer, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, before being dispatched to Ukraine.
Ammunition for the system was initially difficult as it was made in Switzerland, which forbade its transfer because of “neutrality” issues. Buffer stocks were secured from Norway in September 2022 before Rheinmetall began to manufacture ammunition in a new facility opened in December 2022.
The then Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and German defense company Diehl Defence – manufacturer of the IRIS-T system – signed a memorandum of understanding on March 9 to increase deliveries of the missile systems. This followed an earlier meeting with the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius that prioritized German air defense in the face of relentless Russian aerial assaults on Ukrainian cities.
Makeiev also spoke about the Rheinmetall Skynex short-range air defense (SHORAD) system, two of which have been supplied to Ukraine, saying they had been showing good results, particularly against Shahed-type drones. However, he voiced a note of caution as he said that Russia was adapting its tactics, which makes it more difficult to take them on.
Skynex utilizes a 35mm high rate of fire Oerlikon cannon with a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) range, using programmable Advanced Hit Efficiency and Destruction (AHEAD) proximity-fused ammunition. The two systems supplied to Kyiv represented the first operational deployment of Skynex.
Makeiev said Ukraine’s defense industry was working with its German counterparts to build more.
“There are already initial ideas between representatives of the defense industries of Ukraine and Germany to jointly build additional air defense systems. That is, to take the Rheinmetall gun, mount it on a different chassis, and also to combine it with a missile system,” he said.