Gepard

The Flakpanzer Gepard is a West German self-propelled anti-aircraft gun built on the hull of the Leopard 1, developed in the 1960s, fielded through the 1970s, and currently serving as one of the most heavily used counter-drone platforms in the war in Ukraine. It is produced by Rheinmetall, the Düsseldorf prime that also makes the newer Skyranger 30 air defence system often framed as its successor.

At the heart of the system are two 35mm Oerlikon-KDA cannons mounted in a fully stabilised turret, with a search radar at the rear and a tracking radar at the front. The twin-radar arrangement gives the Gepard all-weather engagement capability and the ability to track targets through poor visibility. Its fire-control computer and conventional 35mm rounds — the current Rheinmetall contract specifies High Explosive Incendiary - Tracer and Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot - Tracer — were not designed with small UAV threats in mind, but have been reported effective against low-flying one-way attack drones such as the Shahed/Geran family. The vehicle itself is a 47.5-tonne tracked platform with a three-person crew of driver, gunner and commander, powered by an MTU MB 838 multi-fuel engine. The Gepard carries no onboard AI or target-recognition stack; its automation sits in the radar track and the ballistic computer, not in the kill decision.

Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium retired their Gepard fleets in the two decades after the Cold War, and secondhand vehicles passed to Jordan, Romania, Brazil and Qatar. The platform returned to European front-line service when Germany began transferring Gepards to Ukraine in autumn 2022. In February 2023, Rheinmetall announced a Bundeswehr-funded order worth a low triple-digit million euro sum for 300,000 rounds of 35mm ammunition — 150,000 each of APDS-T and HEI-T — specifically to sustain the Ukrainian fleet, and the company has stood up a new mid-calibre production line at its Unterlüß plant to meet the demand.

Russian milbloggers reported in early October 2026 that Ukrainian forces had positioned Gepards directly on the Northern and Southern bridges in Kyiv to counter Geran drone strikes on the capital’s infrastructure, with Ukrainian channels later describing anti-drone netting hung on the same bridges as a complementary measure. Russian channels have questioned the system’s effectiveness in that role, though independent confirmation of either side’s claim is limited. Separately, Russian industry channel Bespilot reports that NPP Specradio is testing a tethered-balloon barrier whose winches take height cues from a Gepard’s radar — an unverified claim worth noting as the Russian side’s own counter-drone experiments evolve alongside the system they are trying to defeat.