Skyranger 30

Rheinmetall’s modular, unmanned 30 mm gun-missile turret — NATO’s emerging standard for mobile short-range air defense against drones, loitering munitions and low-flying aircraft, rapidly adopted across five European armies.

Overview

The Skyranger 30 is a remotely-operated, platform-agnostic turret that combines a 30 mm revolver cannon with the option of short-range surface-to-air missiles, mated to wheeled or tracked armored vehicles. Developed by Rheinmetall Air Defence AG (formerly Oerlikon), it is purpose-built to defeat Class I–II unmanned aerial systems, loitering munitions and low-flying fixed-wing threats, filling the short-range air-defense gap that most European armies created when they retired legacy systems such as the Gepard. Rheinmetall describes it as the core effector of Germany’s NNbS (Nah- und Nächstbereichsschutz) program.

Development

Rheinmetall first displayed the Skyranger 30 at the ILA Berlin air show in March 2021. The lighter 30 mm turret (2–2.5 t) was engineered to fit 6×6 wheeled vehicles, substantially broadening chassis compatibility compared with the heavier Skyranger 35. Wikiwand records that a Hungarian development-and-integration contract for a tracked Lynx KF41-mounted variant was signed in December 2023 for €30 million. Rheinmetall itself confirmed the system’s “market breakthrough” in February 2024 when Austria ordered 36 turrets on Pandur EVO 6×6 vehicles.

The Austrian order unlocked a cascade of European procurement: Germany followed within weeks with a €595 million contract for 19 Boxer-mounted systems (including a prototype and an option for 30 more), and Denmark placed an order for 16 Piranha V-mounted turrets in September 2024. A Dutch letter of intent for 22 systems on ACSV G5 tracked vehicles, with a project budget of €1.3 billion, was announced in January 2025 Defense News. By mid-2026, a framework contract for 500–600 additional systems for the German Bundeswehr, valued at €6–8 billion, had been publicly signaled but not yet formally signed Defence-Industry.eu. Rheinmetall has stated it is ramping production capacity to roughly 200 turrets per year Defence-UA.

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