Skyranger 30

Skyranger 30 is a short-range air defence turret built by Rheinmetall and aimed squarely at the problem that has come to dominate European ground-based air defence planning since 2022: cheap, slow, low-flying drones arriving in numbers that legacy missile systems were never priced to engage. First shown publicly in 2021 by Rheinmetall Air Defence in Zurich — the former Oerlikon Contraves business — it pairs a compact two-tonne-class turret with whatever wheeled or tracked chassis the buyer already operates, putting a guns-and-missiles counter-UAS layer onto manoeuvre formations rather than tying it to a fixed site.

The turret’s primary effector is the 30mm KCE revolver gun, an evolution of the KCB family, firing at roughly 1,200 rounds per minute. Its decisive ammunition is AHEAD — Advanced Hit Efficiency And Destruction — a programmable air-burst round that ejects 152 tungsten sub-projectiles in a cone ahead of the target, fuse timing set on the fly as each shell passes a muzzle coil. Sensors are integrated on the turret itself: an AESA search-and-track radar on the rear, an electro-optical and infrared sight with laser rangefinder for passive engagement, and a radio-frequency direction finder for emitting drones. The same mount typically carries four Stinger missiles, with FZ275 laser-guided rockets, Mistral, or future small effectors offered as alternatives, allowing the gunner to step from rocket and gun to missile without leaving the engagement.

Germany is the lead customer. The Bundeswehr signed for an initial 19 systems on Boxer 8x8 chassis in February 2024, in a contract worth roughly €595 million, with options that could carry the buy past 50 units. Austria selected the Skyranger 30 the same year on Pandur chassis. Hungary is integrating the turret onto its Lynx KF41 infantry fighting vehicles, building it into the same production line that feeds the army’s mechanised brigades. Denmark announced its own order in 2024 as part of the rapid air-defence rebuilds prompted by drone strikes on Ukrainian rear areas. The system has not yet been used in combat under any operator.

Rheinmetall has continued to push variants on lighter platforms — Leopard 1A5 hulls being pulled from storage, HX trucks for expeditionary use, and a version on the Mission Master unmanned ground vehicle — and is marketing the turret alongside its Oerlikon GDM-008 35mm sister system to cover heavier engagements. Against a field that includes the German-American IRIS-T SLM, the South Korean LIG Nex1 systems, and Kongsberg’s NASAMS, Skyranger 30 fills the niche that Gepard once held in NATO inventories: a mobile, gun-based last layer dense enough to put rounds onto a Shahed before it reaches the target.