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The Skyranger 35 Effect: How Ukraine’s New Air Defense System is Changing the Game — Transcript

by Wes O'Donnell · 2,780 words · 471 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Ukraine has been secretly testing
0:02Europe's newest drone killer since
0:04March. The footage just surfaced. That's
0:07right, Ukraine just revealed that one of
0:09Europe's most important new air defense
0:11weapons has already gone to war.
0:13Rheinmetall's Skyranger 35 is now
0:16confirmed in Ukrainian service, mounted
0:18on a refurbished Leopard 1 chassis, and
0:22the first official Ukrainian footage
0:24shows the system actually destroying an
0:26aerial target. Here's the strange part.
0:28The video appears to have been filmed
0:30months ago, possibly as far back as
0:32March, which means Ukraine may have been
0:34quietly operating Europe's shiny new
0:36drone killer while Germany, Romania,
0:38Denmark, Austria, and several other
0:41countries were already committing to buy
0:43into the same Skyranger family. Europe
0:45placed the bet. Ukraine has apparently
0:48been grading the weapon in secret, and
0:50the results matter because the real
0:52question was never whether Skyranger
0:55could shoot down a drone on a German
0:57firing range in Bavaria. The real
0:59question is whether it can do that
1:01repeatedly against Russia under
1:03electronic warfare, bad weather,
1:05surprise attack routes, friendly drones,
1:08F-16s flying in the same sky, and enough
1:11incoming targets to make the ammunition
1:13bills start getting uncomfortable. Hey
1:16friends, Wes O'Donnell here, defense
1:17journalist, army infantry and air force
1:20veteran, law grad, and hit it, Jack.
1:27Indeed, and I should disclose that I'm a
1:30Skyranger stan. One of my first videos
1:32to really take off on YouTube was about
1:35this system back in early 2025. And
1:37since then, Rheinmetall's little drone
1:40killing tank has occupied an
1:41embarrassingly large piece of my heart.
1:44My partner understands, probably. Today,
1:46we finally have something more
1:47interesting than another Rheinmetall
1:49demonstration video. Ukraine's 1020th
1:52anti-aircraft missile regiment has
1:54released the first official footage of
1:56its Leopard mounted Skyranger 35s. So,
1:59three questions. Where does this thing
2:01actually fit in Ukraine's
2:03>> [music]
2:03>> increasingly layered air defense system?
2:06What makes the 35 mm gun and its
2:08programmable ammunition different than
2:11just spraying shells at a Shahed? And
2:13most importantly, what does real combat
2:16now tell Europe about whether the system
2:18it's buying in large numbers actually
2:20works? Because Ukraine isn't simply
2:22receiving another German weapon. It's
2:25running Europe's live-fire acceptance
2:27test. Ukraine's air defense is
2:28increasingly layered because shooting
2:31every airborne threat with the fanciest
2:33missile available would bankrupt a small
2:35continent by next week. At the low end
2:37sit numerous cheap threats like Shahed,
2:41Geran type attack drones, smaller
2:43reconnaissance UAVs, slow targets Russia
2:45can manufacture and launch in huge
2:47numbers. Ukraine increasingly wants
2:50interceptor drones, electronic warfare,
2:52machine gun teams, and gun-based air
2:54defenses handling as many of those as
2:57possible. Move higher and the problem
2:59gets harder. Cruise missiles fly faster
3:01and lower. Jet-powered drones cut
3:03reaction time. Some targets maneuver.
3:05That's where fighters and systems like
3:07NASAMS matter more. And at the very top
3:09sit the ballistic missiles, which demand
3:11systems like Patriot. And Ukraine's
3:13Patriot magazine is nowhere near deep
3:15enough to waste on something that sounds
3:17like a flying Mario Kart. It's-a me, a
3:20Mario! Skyranger 35 sits in the useful
3:23gap between those layers. Its gun
3:25reaches roughly 4 km and carries its own
3:28sensors and digital fire control. It's
3:31armored, it's mobile, and unlike a
3:33missile system, doesn't have to throw a
3:35six- or seven-figure guided weapon at
3:37every drone entering its sector. Think
3:40of it as the bridge between guys in
3:42pickup trucks with machine guns and the
3:44scarce missile batteries protecting the
3:46targets Russia really wants destroyed.
3:48On September 3rd, just a couple days
3:51ago, the 1020th anti-aircraft missile
3:53regiment released footage showing the
3:56Skyranger 35 crew operations, ammunition
3:59handling, and a brief engagement where
4:01the system destroys an aerial target.
4:03[music] Defense Express noticed
4:05something immediately. The vegetation is
4:08bare. The crew is dressed for cold
4:10weather. Their assessment is that the
4:12footage was recorded no later than
4:14March. The commander, call sign Tamadi,
4:16says his unit was among the first to
4:19receive this system. It's an interesting
4:21phrase since it implies more than one
4:23system and more than one early recipient
4:26at the time this was filmed. Now, we
4:28were all waiting for confirmation that
4:30Ukraine had received the Leopard-mounted
4:32Skyrangers. It turns out Ukrainian crews
4:34may have been using them since at least
4:36March. Now, Rheinmetall announced the
4:38contract in October of 2025, valued
4:41somewhere in the hundreds of millions of
4:43euros. Neither the customer nor the
4:45vehicle count publicly disclosed. One
4:48detail Rheinmetall did reveal that was
4:50wonderfully poetic. The systems were
4:52financed by an EU country using proceeds
4:55generated from frozen Russian assets.
4:58So, let me get this straight. Russia
5:00invaded Ukraine, Europe froze Russian
5:02money, the earnings from that money
5:05bought 35-mm guns for Ukraine. Those
5:08guns are now shooting at Russian
5:10aircraft. International finance briefly
5:12achieves comedy. The Ukrainian version
5:14pairs the Skyranger turret with a
5:16refurbished Leopard 1 chassis. That's a
5:19sensible choice. Ukraine already knows
5:21the platform and Europe has a supply of
5:23retired Leopard 1 hulls sitting around.
5:26The tracked chassis provides armor and
5:28cross-country mobility. The turret
5:30provides the part we actually care
5:31about, though. The KDG 35 1000 revolver
5:35cannon fires 35 x 228 mm ammunition at a
5:39maximum cyclic rate of 1000 rounds per
5:42minute. Effective range about 4 km. Now,
5:45that number sounds spectacular in a
5:47brochure, but operationally, the goal is
5:50to fire nowhere near a thousand rounds.
5:53And understanding why brings us to the
5:55clever part, AHEAD ammunition. Now, a
5:58normal anti-aircraft gun has an annoying
6:00problem. The target is small, it's
6:02moving, you're moving, the atmosphere is
6:05involved, and putting one projectile
6:07directly through a drone several
6:09kilometers out requires everyone
6:11involved to have had a very good morning
6:14and be at the top of their game and
6:16highly caffeinated. AHEAD ammo changes
6:19that geometry. Each 35-mm projectile
6:22contains 152
6:24small tungsten alloy sub-projectiles,
6:27roughly 3.3 g each, per Rheinmetall's
6:30own documentation. Now, before the shell
6:32leaves the gun, Skyranger's fire control
6:35system already knows where it expects
6:36the target to be. As the projectile
6:38passes through the muzzle, the system
6:40measures its actual velocity and
6:42programs an electronic timer into the
6:44round. The shell flies toward the
6:46calculated intercept point, and
6:48immediately before reaching it, opens
6:50and throws those 152 tungsten pieces
6:53forward in a cone. The cannon doesn't
6:56need to thread one 35-mm projectile
6:59directly through a drone. It needs to
7:01place a unpleasant cloud of tungsten in
7:04the patch of sky the drone is about to
7:06occupy. I call this the angry tungsten
7:08bees because I hate bees. Yes, I know
7:11they're pollinators. They remain deeply
7:13suspicious. The important part is the
7:16fire control. Skyranger tracks the
7:18target, predicts its path, calculates
7:20the intercept, measures every projectile
7:23as it leaves the barrel, and adjusts the
7:25programmed burst point accordingly,
7:27letting the crew fire a short burst and
7:29create overlapping clouds directly in
7:31the target's path. At a test range, the
7:34manufacturer controls almost everything.
7:36They know where the target is coming and
7:38roughly where from. The radar
7:40environment is clean, nobody's jamming,
7:43there aren't hundreds of friendly drones
7:44cluttering the airspace, maintenance is
7:47nearby, and if something goes badly
7:48wrong, nobody from Russia posts the
7:50wreckage on Telegram. Now, Ukraine
7:52removes all those comforts. A Russian
7:55raid might approach from an unexpected
7:58direction or altitude. The radar has to
8:00separate a real target from ground
8:02clutter and civilian signals. While
8:04Ukraine itself has thousands of drones
8:06in the same sky, electronic warfare
8:09interferes with sensors and
8:10communications. A SHORAD might fly one
8:12profile while a faster jet-powered drone
8:14approaches from elsewhere, cruise
8:16missiles arriving during the same
8:18attack, and one Skyranger starts firing.
8:20Russia gets information, too. A
8:22reconnaissance drone may locate the gun,
8:24an electronic intelligence system may
8:26catch the emission, another drone can
8:28follow the muzzle flashes, then somebody
8:31sends a Lancet or an FPV or a missile or
8:34an artillery round toward the very
8:35expensive German air defense system that
8:37just announced where it lives. Skyranger
8:40kills drones. Drones will
8:42enthusiastically attempt to return the
8:43favor. That's why one engagement video
8:46doesn't really answer the real
8:47questions, which are accumulating
8:49somewhere in Ukrainian after-action
8:51reports right now. How quickly did the
8:53radar acquire the target? How often did
8:56the first burst kill it? How many rounds
8:58did the engagement require? Did the
9:00sensors stay reliable under heavy
9:02electronic warfare? How much maintenance
9:04did the turret need after weeks of
9:05operations? And the most important
9:07economic metric of all, rounds per kill.
9:10That number matters far more than 1,000
9:12rounds a minute. A five-round kill and a
9:1530-round kill both [music] end with a
9:17dead drone, but the economics are
9:19completely different. And AHEAD ammo
9:21isn't bargain-bin ammunition. You're
9:23paying for programmable fuses, tungsten
9:25payloads, precision manufacturing, and
9:28the fire control required to place the
9:30rounds accurately. Five rounds per kill
9:32across 5,000 engagements looks very
9:34different from 30 rounds per kill across
9:36the same 5,000. I think ahead ammunition
9:39rounds are about $1,000 a piece. So,
9:42ammunition doesn't magically appear
9:44because Rheinmetall built a nice turret.
9:46Ukraine already learned that lesson with
9:47the Gepard after Switzerland blocked
9:49re-export of Swiss-made 35-mm ammunition
9:53early in the war, and Germany had to
9:55rebuild production capacity
9:56domestically. A first order of 300,000
9:59rounds followed by another 180,000,
10:02with those deliveries continuing into
10:042026. So, those specific orders were for
10:07Gepard ammunition rather than
10:09necessarily the AHEAD loads Skyranger
10:11consumes, but they illustrate the
10:13industrial problem exactly. Owning the
10:16gun is half the job. You need enough
10:18ammunition to keep feeding it through a
10:21winter where Russia might launch
10:23hundreds of drones in a single night.
10:24Now, Europe has already committed
10:26heavily to the Skyranger. Germany is
10:28buying the 30-mm variant on Boxer.
10:31Austria has ordered it. The Netherlands
10:33has ordered the family. Denmark is
10:35moving toward it. Romania has ordered
10:38Skyranger 35 on Lynx. Rheinmetall says
10:40demand is strong enough that it intends
10:42to grow annual turret production from
10:45roughly 70 or 100 today toward as many
10:48as 400 a year. That's a pretty big
10:50industrial bet. Now, much of that
10:52requirement exists because Ukraine
10:54reminded Europe of something NATO had
10:57allowed itself to forget. For decades,
10:59Western armies assumed they generally
11:01enjoy air superiority. So, short-range
11:03gun-based air defense shrank, and Cold
11:07War systems retired. Iraq and
11:09Afghanistan didn't punish that decision
11:11much because insurgents weren't watching
11:13hundreds of one-way attack drones at
11:15armored brigades. Ukraine changed the
11:16problem entirely. Every artillery
11:18position watched, every logistics route
11:20hunted, FPVs attacking armor, loitering
11:23munitions circling positions, Shaheds
11:26saturating strategic targets, and the
11:28air defense layer has to move with the
11:30formation now, which is exactly why
11:32Gepard became valuable again. An old
11:34Cold War German system proving that
11:36radar-guided 35-mm guns remain extremely
11:40useful when the enemy fills the sky with
11:42cheap machines. Skyranger is Europe's
11:44attempt to build the modern version of
11:46that same idea. Better sensors, digital
11:49networking, programmable ammunition,
11:52modular missiles, a turret that rides on
11:54multiple armor platforms. Now, Ukraine
11:57gets to determine which parts need
12:00fixing. Maybe crews need more ammunition
12:02on board. Maybe radar software needs
12:04adjusting for particular Russian drone
12:06profiles. Maybe missile launchers become
12:08essential for targets outside of gun
12:10range. Or maybe the Leopard-based
12:12configuration performs well enough that
12:15tracked Skyrangers become more
12:17attractive than anyone expected. That's
12:19exactly why you send equipment to the
12:21place where the problem actually exists.
12:23The feedback flows straight back into
12:26the versions Germany, Romania, and
12:28everyone else will eventually operate.
12:31And there's one more reason Ukraine
12:32Skyranger experience matters to Germany
12:34right now. It has nothing to do with the
12:37radar or the 35-mm ammunition. German
12:40politics is changing very quickly. On
12:42Sunday, the far-right Alternative for
12:45Germany, the AfD, won roughly 44% of the
12:48vote in Saxony-Anhalt, taking 39 of the
12:51state parliament's 83 seats. It was the
12:54strongest state-level performance by
12:56Germany's far-right since the Second
12:59World War. And an absolute mauling for
13:01Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU. And
13:04this matters for Ukraine because the AfD
13:07has taken a fundamentally different
13:09position toward Russia than the current
13:11German government. The party wants
13:13Germany to stop military support for
13:15Ukraine, end sanctions on Russia, and
13:18rebuild economic and political ties with
13:21Moscow. That's the exact opposite of
13:24what I'm about, and it's the exact
13:26opposite direction Merz is taking
13:28Germany today, which includes
13:30dramatically higher defense spending,
13:32more air defense systems, thousands of
13:34drones for Ukraine, and increasingly
13:36deep cooperation between German and
13:38Ukrainian defense companies. Nationally,
13:40the AfD is now polling at roughly 28%
13:43ahead of Friedrich Merz's conservatives
13:45in some surveys. Now, Merz continues to
13:48rule out governing with them,
13:49maintaining Germany's political firewall
13:51around the party. The problem for the
13:53established parties is that a firewall
13:56becomes considerably harder to maintain
13:58when the party on the other side keeps
13:59winning more votes. So, there's a
14:01strange race underway in Germany.
14:03Rheinmetall is expanding production.
14:06Germany is rebuilding air defense. The
14:09Bundeswehr is rearming. German weapons
14:12are gaining combat experience in
14:13Ukraine, and at the same time, a growing
14:15political movement inside Germany is
14:17arguing that Berlin should stop
14:19supporting Ukraine and repair its
14:21relationship with Russia. That puts
14:23weapons like Skyranger into a much
14:25larger political story. Ukraine may be
14:27proving whether Germany's new generation
14:29of air defense systems actually works
14:30against Russia and exactly the moment
14:32Germans are having an increasingly
14:34serious argument over how much of a
14:36threat Russia presents in the first
14:37place. Now, I'm an American. I don't
14:39meddle in German politics or any other
14:41country's politics. It's not my
14:42business. That's the CIA's job. But,
14:45Rheinmetall can't engineer its way
14:47around this one. And here's the metric
14:49that matters more than any engagement
14:51video from Ukraine. And it's the one you
14:54can't see yet, survivability. Ukraine
14:57will eventually tell us, indirectly if
14:59not publicly, whether commanders trust
15:01Skyranger enough to put it near assets
15:03they absolutely cannot afford to lose.
15:05As army infantry, I know exactly what
15:08this kind of trust actually looks like
15:10on the ground. Soldiers don't decide
15:12whether a supporting weapon system is
15:13good by reading its spec sheet. They
15:15decide by watching whether the units
15:17around it keep choosing to stay close to
15:19it under fire. If these vehicles end up
15:22defending logistics hubs and airfields
15:24and power infrastructure or troop
15:26concentrations Ukraine can't replace,
15:28that's the real endorsement. If crews
15:31constantly have to relocate because
15:32Russian drones hunt them immediately
15:34after every engagement, Europe will
15:35learn that, too, just less publicly. The
15:38system doesn't have to be invulnerable,
15:40nothing on this battlefield is, but it
15:42has to generate enough kills, survive
15:44enough engagements, and stay available
15:46often enough that the protection it
15:48provides outweighs the effort Russia
15:50spends trying to kill it. That's the
15:52exam, and it began months before we even
15:54knew anyone had handed out the test
15:56paper. So, when Rheinmetall announced
15:58the Ukrainian contract last October,
16:00Skyranger 35 was still something Europe
16:03hoped would solve the low-altitude drone
16:05problem Ukraine has exposed. Today, we
16:08have Ukrainian footage of one actually
16:10engaging a target. The laboratory phase
16:13is over. The brochure phase is over.
16:15[music] Now comes the only evaluation
16:18that ultimately matters, and Russia gets
16:20a vote. If Skyranger survives that vote,
16:22Europe may have found one of the missing
16:24pieces in the air defense layer it
16:26dismantled after the Cold War. If it
16:29doesn't, Ukrainian crews will tell
16:30Rheinmetall exactly why and exactly the
16:32kind of detail that no test range could
16:34ever produce on its own. Either way, the
16:37rest of Europe will be reading the
16:39report card very carefully. And
16:41personally, I'm just pleased my
16:43unhealthy emotional attachment to a
16:4535-mm air defense turret has finally
16:47received some combat validation. My
16:50partner remains cautiously supportive.
16:52That's it for today, my friends. If this
16:55kind of military technology analysis is
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16:59I cover Ukraine, NATO, strange weapons,
17:02and apparently my ongoing infatuation
17:04with German air defense systems four
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17:11avalanche of slop currently filling up
17:13every corner of the internet. Actually,
17:15somebody recently said I was AI in one
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17:22if I were AI, my teeth would be a lot
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17:38viewers are the best. And as always,
17:41glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.
17:44Crimea
17:45is Ukraine.

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