German Leopard 1A5 at the 2015 Military Day in Uffenheim on 7 June 2015. By Wikimedia user Rainer Lippert.
German defense contractor Rheinmetall could soon supply Ukraine with a new self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, the company’s head of Land Systems, Bjorn Bernhard, said in an interview with Bild that was published on June 16.
According to Bernhard, the system, which the German media dubbed “Frankenstein tanks,” is already in the works. The system would be a heavily armored version of Rheinmetall’s advanced Skyranger 35 anti-aircraft gun turret mounted on the chassis of Cold War-era Leopard 1 main battle tanks. It will reportedly be capable of dealing with targets such as drones, missiles and artillery fire at a short-range.
“There are still a lot of Leopard 1 battle tanks on whose chassis we could put the Skyranger turret with the 35 mm machine gun,” Bernhard said in the interview, which took place at a secret Rheinmetall tank repair factory in Western Ukraine that was reportedly launched in early June.
The Skyranger 35 turret is armed with a 35 mm revolver cannon, based on the 35/1000 revolver gun, with 252 rounds. The cannon can fire single-shots, rapid single shots at 200 rounds per minute or at a maximum rate of 1,000 rounds per minute. It has an effective range of four kilometers.
The turret is also equipped with an integrated sensor suite, consisting of an X-band or Ku-band tracking radar with a range out to 30 km and an EO/IR camera with a laser rangefinder and automatic target tracking.
Rheinmetall presented a similar vehicle, albeit placed on a Leopard 2 chassis, at the ongoing Eurosatory 2024 defense industry exhibition in Paris.
“Highly mobile, modular and scalable ground-based air defense systems are becoming increasingly important as NATO forces refocus on national and alliance defense,” the company said in a press release.
It is unclear when Ukraine may get the new hybrid self-propelled anti-aircraft gun. Kiev forces have already received roughly a hundred traditionally configured Leopard 1 tanks from Germany.
In recent months, the Kiev regime increased pressure on its allies to supply more air defenses to counter repeated Russian drone and missile attacks.
While Rheinmetall is now promoting its Frankenstein tanks as the ultimate solution, or even some Wunderwaffe, the truth is that Germany has already supplied Ukraine with a very similar anti-aircraft gun system dubbed Skynex. The system made no difference whatsoever, and there were reports of at least one being destroyed by the Russian military earlier this year.
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