Rheinmetall a few days ago launched the first delivery of new ammunition for Gepard anti-aircraft gun tanks to Ukraine. In accordance with the contract, the Düsseldorf-based technology group has now delivered the first batch of 35-millimeter anti-aircraft ammunition as part of Germany’s support for the Ukraine’s defensive campaign defense campaign. A total of 40,000 cartridges are to be manufactured and made available by the end of the year.
The deliveries from Germany are urgently awaited in Ukraine, as the Gepard with its 35-millimeter twin cannon is “a decisive factor in the country’s defence campaign” according to the Ukrainian army. The German government has provided 46 of these anti-aircraft tanks, with a further six to follow. They are essential for Ukraine in the battle for air sovereignty over its territory. The Gepard anti-aircraft tanks are proving to be an extremely effective defensive weapon against kamikaze drones used by Russia to attack Ukrainian cities. They are in virtually permanent use, and the demand for ammunition is correspondingly high. Until now, Rheinmetall has manufactured most of its ammunition for medium-caliber weapons in Switzerland, but now, for the first time, new production capacities have been created in Germany to supply the Gepard systems. Several million euros have been invested in the plant. In February, Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius announced at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting in Brussels that a corresponding ammunition production facility would be built at Rheinmetall in Germany. The contract for the short-term delivery of a total of 300,000 rounds of ammunition for the Gepard anti-aircraft tank had been signed a few days earlier. In the struggle for ammunition supplies, the German government had also left no stone unturned abroad – to no avail. In Germany, stocks were at zero after the Gepard systems had already been decommissioned around 15 years ago. Other countries refused to provide existing ammunition for political or constitutional reasons. https://militaeraktuell.at/bundesheer-erstmalig-frau-als-praesidialchefin/ The challenge: there were simply no earlier tools available to recreate the original type of ammunition. A mixture of reverse engineering and adaptation development was used. The existing 35-millimetre ammunition for the on-board weapon of an infantry fighting vehicle was made usable for the Gepard by making suitable adaptations. One particular challenge was to make the ammunition reliably recognizable for the Gepard’s fire control computer. After many tests at the Unterlüss test center in Lower Saxony, the verification program was successfully completed in May with fire from the Gepard anti-aircraft tank.
At the same time, a so-called LAP line was designed in Rheinmetall’s civilian division in Neuss, which was later built in Lanciano, Italy – also at Rheinmetall – and finally relocated to Unterlüss. LAP stands for the processing steps Loading – Assembly – Packing, i.e. the filling of the cases with the propellant charge, the assembly of the various components of a cartridge and the packaging. The powder for the propellant charge comes from Nitrochemie, which is also part of the Group. A total of 40,000 cartridges are to be delivered in 2023. Ukraine will receive two types of ammunition, 150,000 rounds of each. The first is APDS-T sub-caliber ammunition, which contains heavy metal penetrators and is particularly suitable for use against hardened targets. The second is classic HEI-T explosive incendiary ammunition, which was designed for typical air defence targets, i.e. air targets such as aircraft or guided missiles.
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