A 1960s-era cannon is 'kicking ass' against Russia's drones, but the country that makes ammo for it won't send more to Ukraine

• The Flakpanzer Gepard has been one of Ukraine's the most valuable weapons against Russia.
• The Gepard, a 1970s-era air-defense cannon, has been highly effective in taking down Russian drones.

One of the most valuable weapons that Ukraine has gotten to help fight Russia is a relatively unsophisticated German system from the 1970s: the Flakpanzer Gepard.

The Gepard, which means "cheetah" in German, is self-propelled anti-aircraft gun that uses two automatic cannons to take out aerial targets. It was the first heavy weapon that Germany sent to Ukraine.

Despite being close to 50 years old, the Gepard is filling an important role in Ukraine's air-defense network: taking out low-flying drones and missiles that are very threatening but too cheap and numerous to justify using sophisticated surface-to-air missiles to shoot down.

The Gepard's performance in Ukraine has demonstrated the enduring value of simple and mobile anti-aircraft systems in the 21st century, but Ukraine's Gepards face another problem far from the frontline: The country that makes their ammunition has so far been unwilling to let Kyiv have more of it.

The Gepard SPAAG

The Gepard was designed in the 1960s and entered service in the 1970s. Built on the chassis of a Leopard 1 tank, it is capable of speeds up to 40 mph and has a range of 340 miles.

Its main armament is two Oerlikon GDF 35mm autocannons on either side of its specially designed turret. It carries about 320 rounds for each cannon, both of which can fire of 550 rounds a minute. Belts of ammo are fed to each gun through hermetically sealed chutes in the turret.

The Gepard can fire a variety of ammunition, including Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot Tracer rounds, High Explosive Incendiary Tracer rounds, and Advanced Hit Efficiency and Destruction rounds. Depending on the ammunition they're using, Gepard cannons can hit targets some 6,500 yards away.

The turret has an S-Band search radar mounted on its rear and a Ku-band tracking radar on its front. Each radar can detect targets up to about 9 miles away. The search radar, which constantly rotates at 60 rpm, locates a target and passes the data to the tracking radar, allowing for a continuous search.

With a crew of three — a commander, a driver, and a gunner — the Gepard was designed to take on heavily armed and armored Soviet helicopter gunships. Its target set eventually expanded to include low-flying drones, missiles, and rockets.

German defense company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann built 570 Gepards between 1963 and 1980 — 420 for the German Bundeswehr, 95 for the Dutch army, and 55 for the Belgian army. The Netherlands and Belgium retired their Gepards around 2006 and Germany did so in 2010. Brazil, Jordan, Qatar, and Romania have since purchased some decommissioned Gepards.

Success in Ukraine

After being criticized for its reluctance to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine, the German government promised some 50 Gepards to Ukraine in April 2022. The first three arrived in July and were followed by another 27 by the end of the year.

As of March, 34 Gepards have been sent to Ukraine, with plans to deliver at least three more.

The Gepards were rushed to the frontlines almost immediately and proved effective at downing low-flying Russian cruise missiles and drones. They have been particularly effective against Iranian-made Shahed-131 and 136 loitering munitions that Russia is using against Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian Gepard crews have been successful despite receiving just two months of training, compared to the German standard of 18 months. One crew around Odessa reportedly downed 10 Shaheds and two cruise missiles in a single day.

The Gepards fill an important gap in Ukraine's air-defense network, which includes long-range systems like Soviet-era S-300 and Buk surface-to-air-missile systems as well as Western-made systems like NASAMS and the MIM-104 Patriot, which recently arrived in Ukraine.

Missiles fired by those systems are more advanced, but they are expensive and few in number. Those missiles are also Ukraine's main defense against Russia's fast, high-flying fighters and bombers, and Ukrainian forces can't afford to use them against every drone and cruise missile. Gepards are designed to destroy low-flying targets and are much cheaper to operate.

The different weapons have worked in tandem — surface-to-air missiles force Russian aircraft and cruise missiles to fly at lower altitudes, enabling Gepards and Ukrainian troops armed with shoulder-fired missiles to take them down — to create an integrated air-defense system that US military officials have praised.

Ammo woes

The Gepards' 35mm rounds with air-burst capability, which explode near targets and fill the air with shrapnel, are particularly useful for their mission, but access to that ammo may also be a limiting factor.

The only country that makes air-bust ammo for the Gepard is Switzerland, which not only refuses to sell more ammo to Ukraine because of its commitment to neutrality but also prohibits other countries from re-exporting Swiss defense products to another country at war.

Consequently, Ukraine hasn't been able to buy more ammunition from the Swiss, and Germany has been unable to send more ammo from its stocks. Attempts to acquire ammunition from other countries have fallen through for political and technical reasons.

The Gepards "are kicking ass against the drones, against the Shahed," Mark Montgomery, a retired US Navy admiral who is now senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said at a Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance event in February.

"They're shooting them down. They're doing fantastic, but they're running out of ammo," Montgomery added.

In February, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that German firm Rheinmetall would restart ammo production for the Gepard. The company has said two batches of 35mm rounds would be delivered to Ukraine: 150,000 APDS-T rounds arriving this summer and 150,000 rounds of HEI-T rounds to be delivered in 2024.

Ukraine's need for Gepard ammunition may only increase, however. US intelligence documents composed in February and leaked on the internet in recent weeks show assessments that Ukraine's main surface-to-air missiles could be expended as early as May, meaning that weapons like the Gepard will have to be fired more.

SPAAGs in demand

The Gepard's performance in Ukraine has demonstrated its utility to a wide audience, but many militaries have fielded self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, or SPAAGs, for decades.

Russia has three in service: the 2K22 Tunguska, the Pantsir S-1, and the aging ZSU-23-4 Shilka. China has two models, the older Type 95, which will eventually be replaced by the newer Type 09. Finland's Leopard 2 Marksman, Japan's Type 87, and Turkey's KORKUT all use Oerlikon cannons.

The US military retired its last dedicated SPAAG, the M163 VADS, in 1994. Since then, it has relied entirely on missile systems like the Avenger (which fires Stingers), the Patriot, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD.

The US's prime anti-air weapon is its Air Force, which has maintained air superiority in every conflict it has fought in since the end of the Cold War.

But US Air Force officials don't expect that dominance to last, and the US military has stepped up its search for a SPAAG-like weapon to fill its air-defense gap.

The US Army, traditionally responsible for short-range air defense, has fielded an interim solution — the Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system. Based on the Stryker armored vehicle, the M-SHORAD is armed with four Stinger missiles, two AGM-114L Hellfire missiles, and a 30mm M230 autocannon.

US soldiers in Europe were the first to receive M-SHORADs in April 2021.