With the widespread advent of drone warfare, a whole lot of air defense doctrine needs to be rewritten. Ground-To-Air interceptor missiles that were cost-effective for multi-million fighter planes aren’t for thousands upon thousands of cheap drones, some of which cost less than $1,000 a pop. Cheap kinetic kill shells, AKA “ack-ack,” the mainstay of World War II, are making a comeback in a big way.
“This is the [Rheinmetall] Skyranger, a new unmanned weapon that blasts 30 mm rounds at a facemelting 1,200 rounds per minute.”
“Germany just ordered 600 of these bad boys for the total price of €9 billion, roughly $10.4 billion.”
“The plan for these is to be slapped on to their new boxer vehicles.” In fact, Skyranger the weapons platform is independent of the chassis it rides on. You can theoretically mount it on any modern BMP or tank chassis.
“Also it’s not just the gun. It’s a series of four optionally manned air defense systems you can slap onto any vehicle that can handle the weight and includes a dedicated radar platform. Two designed to fire missiles and one with the big gun on top.”
The gun comes in 30mm and 35mm flavors, to match whatever ammo the purchasing army is using.
“These are classified as SHORAD platforms, or short-ranged air defense.”
“While things like Patriot batteries are designed to be stationary long range assets, the idea behind Skyrangers and other SHORADs is that they’re integrated with maneuver formations. So while tanks and infantry push forward, these will hang back a bit and create a nice little defensive bubble in the airspace for the fighty boys to work under.”
Discussion of rotary cannon vs. rotary barrel cannon snipped. But single barrel cannons make it much easier to program burst modes on the rounds right before they exit the cannon.
“The gun itself has a max range of 3,000m, a little short of 2 miles.” With coverage extended with the missile-firing turrets, which can use a variety of munitions, “everything from old Stingers to future ones like the Sky Knight missile.”
“There are two different kinds of rounds currently used in the 30 mm version. The PMC 308, which is the same air burst round used on the Puma IFV, and the newer PMC 455, which manages to nearly quadruple the number of tungsten projectiles and the same round can carry for the same weight by making it smaller.” More projectiles mean a better chance of a kill for a small target like a drone.
“Because the turrets are unmanned, it means it doesn’t take any space up in the actual hull of the vehicle, which means big or small, you can slap that shit on anything.”
I’m going to skip over the “cold start” vertically-launched anti-tank missile system covered at the end (fascinating though that technology is) as off-topic for this particular post.
“According to all accounts, so far for the German Flakpanzer Gepards that were donated, they’ve been performing pretty decently in Ukraine, targeting both small and large drones on top of slower moving cruise missiles.”
Speaking of Gepards, Suchomimus has impressive footage of a Gepard actually taking out a Shahed drone:
The Gepards are just shy of a half century in service, and were actually retired by Germany before being hauled back out and shipped off to Ukraine, where they seem to be doing solid work, there just aren’t enough to cover the wide the vast expanse of airspace the war encompasses.
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7 Responses to “SHORAD: Everything Old Is New Again”
The current Chinese embargo on tungsten exports will make the Oerlikon KCx and KDx projectiles too expensive to use on drones. Tungsten is now running $ 80 to $ 100 per kg on the commodity market in Shanghai and about 10 times that outside of China.
We actually had a program to develop a mobile air defense unit comparable to the Gepard back in the 1970’s called DIVAD/M247/Sgt. York. It collapsed due to Ford (Philco) Defense incompetence and corruption. The final straw was when it targeted dignitaries on observation bleachers during a firing demonstration. The Senators, Congressmen, and DoD officials who dived off the bleachers in terror went back to Washington and immediately killed the program.
Because the turrets are unmanned, it means it doesn’t take any space up in the actual hull of the vehicle, which means big or small, you can slap that shit on anything.
A little misleading. It does mean you can have a smaller footprint inside the vehicle, since you don’t need to have space for a gunner, but if you’re doing things like putting all the ammo and servos for traversing in the turret, that turret is going to big bigger and heavier than it otherwise might be. And if you’re not, you have to have space in the vehicle’s hull for these systems.
Point is, there are tradeoffs for the extra modularity they’re claiming. Not to mention that bolting a ton of gun, ammunition, servos, sensors and armor to the top of your vehicle has its own costs, from extra weight to keep the roof from caving in to the worse handling from all that mass on the top of the vehicle, most of which are at least ameliorated by having a proper turret integrated into the vehicle.
Of course, multiple versions (an integrated mount and a surface mount) will also be more expensive, and a more limited (but functional) version tomorrow is probably better than a ‘perfect’ system next year, if ever.
Compare and contrast with the US Navy’s CIWS system, which is a similarly modular device, if designed for a higher end target.
No, drones are directly result of continuing advances in electronics and miniaturization. The cost advantage is orders of magnitude lower than having advanced combat aircraft strike ground targets with expensive precision munitions.
Besides these fine machines, I think a few shotguns with 3” shells loaded with something like Federal Flite Control 00 buckshot would be a good thing to scatter among the troops.
The current Chinese embargo on tungsten exports will make the Oerlikon KCx and KDx projectiles too expensive to use on drones. Tungsten is now running $ 80 to $ 100 per kg on the commodity market in Shanghai and about 10 times that outside of China.
We actually had a program to develop a mobile air defense unit comparable to the Gepard back in the 1970’s called DIVAD/M247/Sgt. York. It collapsed due to Ford (Philco) Defense incompetence and corruption. The final straw was when it targeted dignitaries on observation bleachers during a firing demonstration. The Senators, Congressmen, and DoD officials who dived off the bleachers in terror went back to Washington and immediately killed the program.
A little misleading. It does mean you can have a smaller footprint inside the vehicle, since you don’t need to have space for a gunner, but if you’re doing things like putting all the ammo and servos for traversing in the turret, that turret is going to big bigger and heavier than it otherwise might be. And if you’re not, you have to have space in the vehicle’s hull for these systems.
Point is, there are tradeoffs for the extra modularity they’re claiming. Not to mention that bolting a ton of gun, ammunition, servos, sensors and armor to the top of your vehicle has its own costs, from extra weight to keep the roof from caving in to the worse handling from all that mass on the top of the vehicle, most of which are at least ameliorated by having a proper turret integrated into the vehicle.
Of course, multiple versions (an integrated mount and a surface mount) will also be more expensive, and a more limited (but functional) version tomorrow is probably better than a ‘perfect’ system next year, if ever.
Compare and contrast with the US Navy’s CIWS system, which is a similarly modular device, if designed for a higher end target.
Isn’t the drone war just a consequence of neither party being able to establish air superiority?
No, drones are directly result of continuing advances in electronics and miniaturization. The cost advantage is orders of magnitude lower than having advanced combat aircraft strike ground targets with expensive precision munitions.
Besides these fine machines, I think a few shotguns with 3” shells loaded with something like Federal Flite Control 00 buckshot would be a good thing to scatter among the troops.
This is an interesting and informative video but why is the narrator talking to a 30 round Magpul.magazine?!
Can’t tell you. This is the first video I’ve used by the guy.