When the German government authorized the delivery of around 50 Flakpanzer Gepard tanks to Ukraine in April 2022, it could never have anticipated how important they would become in the country’s battle with Russia.
After all, Germany had already written off and phased out the Gepard over a decade prior.
It had been developed in the 1960s, entered service in the 1970s, and was ultimately replaced in 2010.
As far as Berlin was concerned, this was an old and outdated asset, with only limited value left to offer.
Then Ukraine got hold of it, and managed to turn this decades-old tank into a veritable monster.
To understand this remarkable turnaround, it’s important to first understand what the Gepard is and what it’s capable of.
The Flakpanzer Gepard, also known as the Cheetah, is an all-weather-capable, self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) tank.
That means that, unlike typical main battle tanks, which are designed for frontline warfare and direct engagements with other tanks and armored vehicles, the Gepard was exclusively designed to deal with enemy aircraft, including low-flying planes and helicopters.
The idea for the Gepard came about in the 1960s, when the West German Army, or Bundeswehr, realized that existing anti-aircraft systems, like the United States’ M42 Duster, were gradually becoming obsolete.
Strike aircraft were becoming faster and more agile, while attack helicopters were becoming an increasingly important threat.
NATO needed systems that were more mobile, precise, and able to accompany the likes of tanks and armored infantry vehicles into combat to engage enemy aircraft, regardless of terrain or weather conditions.
As a result, two development teams made up of various European contractors – including Rheinmetall, AEG, Krauss-Maffei, and Oerlikon – got to work on a replacement for the Duster.
Various prototypes were made and tested before the Bundeswehr made its final decision.
The winning design was based on a Leopard 1 main battle tank chassis, but instead of the usual 105mm L7A3 L/52 rifled gun seen on a standard Leopard 1, the Gepard was instead equipped with a pair of 35mm Oerlikon KDA auto cannons, capable of firing up to 550 rounds per minute.
Under the hood, the Gepard also housed a computerized fire control system, capable of autonomous target engagement, along with both a search radar and a tracking radar.
Mass production began in the mid-1970s, and hundreds of Gepards were subsequently built, including the standard German Gepard and the Dutch CA1, which was equipped with a different radar installation.
While a large portion of these tanks remained in service with the Bundeswehr and the Dutch military for many years, hundreds more were shipped out to nations across Europe and beyond, including Belgium, Chile, and Romania.
During the Cold War, which is effectively what it was designed for, the Gepard became widely regarded as one of the most capable anti-aircraft systems anywhere in the world.
And it’s not hard to see why.
It delivered numerous advantages over pre-existing anti-aircraft assets.
The first, and perhaps most important, was its mobility.
Unlike towed anti-aircraft guns, which had to be dragged from place to place with other vehicles, the Gepard had the ability to travel independently.
Built on the back of the Leopard 1 and boasting a 10-cylinder MTU multi-fuel engine, it was able to achieve relatively high road speeds of up to 40 miles per hour (65 kilometers per hour), while also enjoying an operational range of around 340 miles (550 kilometers).
This meant that it could keep pace with other tanks and armored vehicles,
and even when traveling cross-country or over difficult terrain, it wasn’t the sort of system that would easily get bogged down in the mud.
It could go wherever the rest of the force could go, without lagging behind or requiring special care and assistance.
In addition, the Gepard had the benefit of being a self-contained anti-air system.
That was unique for the time, as many pre-existing air defenses were made of separate pieces – radar vehicles, command posts, and so on.
The Gepard had all it needed right there in one piece, including the search radar, the tracking radar, the guns, the ammo, and the fire control system.
Its crew could detect, identify, track, and engage targets as and when they needed, without having to liaise with other teams or rely on other assets.
The Gepard also became known for its remarkable reaction times.
It could lock on and open fire within a matter of seconds, and when you’re dealing with the prospect of low-flying, fast-moving strike aircraft or attack helicopters suddenly appearing on the horizon, that sort of speed matters.
As far as power and performance were concerned, too, the Gepard stood head and shoulders above many of its contemporaries.
It boasted not one but two of the very best anti-aircraft guns of the era, allowing it to fire a staggering 1,100 rounds per minute, in total.
With excellent accuracy and an effective range of several kilometers, these cannons could literally launch a wall of shells into the air, turning the sky into a death trap for any Soviet pilot that dared to get too close.
This also meant that many of the typical anti-aircraft counter-measures that the Soviets used at the time, such as flares, radar jammers, and electronic warfare systems, didn’t pose much of a threat to the Gepard; all it had to do was launch dozens and dozens of shells towards its target and it would have a greater than average chance of bringing it down.
It was, in many ways, the perfect weapon for its time – the ideal counter to Soviet strike aircraft, low-flying bombers, and attack helicopters, like the Mi-24.
But the Gepard’s time eventually seemed to come to an end.
By the 1990s and early 2000s, the strategic environment was no longer the same.
The Cold War ended.
The Soviet Union collapsed.
And the kinds of threats the Gepard was made to deal with appeared to have vanished.
The idea of vast tank battles and bombing runs across Central Europe no longer seemed very likely, and the world’s major military forces began to focus more heavily on surface-to-air missile development, creating air defense systems with far greater range than conventional guns like the Gepard.
All of a sudden, this once
world-beating system was starting to look like a relic.
As they looked ahead to the future, military planners envisioned that future conflicts would be dominated by supersonic missile systems and billion dollar strike aircraft.
They didn’t see a place in that sort of battlefield for a gun that weighed close to 50 tons, required its own trained crew and logistical support to operate, and also needed quite expensive and extensive maintenance, due to its mechanical complexity.
Berlin could no longer justify holding onto and maintaining a relatively extensive fleet of these anti-aircraft guns, as it didn’t expect to ever actually need to use them.
Added to this was the fact that during the 90s and 2000s, the Bundeswehr was almost exclusively focused on overseas deployments.
Its forces went to places like Afghanistan to assist with counter-insurgency and peace support operations.
In those kinds of settings, there weren’t vast amounts of enemy jets and attack helicopters to worry about, so the Gepard felt increasingly useless.
As a result, the inevitable eventually occurred.
In 2010, the Gepard was officially withdrawn from German service.
It was replaced by something quite different – the Wiesel 2 Light Air Defense System, which was slightly faster and significantly lighter and more compact, making it much easier to transport and deploy wherever it was needed.
And so, many of the old Gepards began to gather dust and seemed destined either for the scrapheap or to be exported to nations with relatively small military budgets that didn’t mind investing in equipment that was deemed “outdated” by Western European standards.
In the years that followed, Germany had even planned to ship out some of these systems to Brazil and Qatar to be used as security measures during events like the Summer Olympics and FIFA World Cup.
Then, the war in Ukraine broke out.
Initially, Germany was criticized for its lack of support to Kyiv’s forces, with Berlin infamously offering to send a few thousand helmets to Ukraine just before the war began.
Soon after, however, the German government started to look much more seriously at ways in which it could help the Ukrainian Army defend its homeland, and on April 26, 2022, it was announced that dozens of Gepards would be dispatched to Kyiv from stocks maintained by the German manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
Germany has since gone on to supply at least 55 of these anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, which have since been labeled the “best drone killer” in the country’s entire arsenal.
How? How did something that was considered obsolete suddenly become one of the most integral elements in the largest and most devastating war of the 21st century? Before we answer that, you’re watching The Military Show — and if you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s the time.
The reason why the Gepard has been such a big hit on the battlefields of Ukraine boils down to one simple, inescapable truth: the predictions were wrong.
When Germany’s military planners imagined the future of warfare, they foresaw a world in which conflicts were decided by lightning fast missiles and strike aircraft fitted with some of the most advanced military technologies ever invented.
They didn’t think about drones.
They failed to realize what a huge impact unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would have.
Then, the Ukraine war began, and the world began to witness just how destructive and devastating drones could be as Russia launched vast swarms of them towards Ukrainian towns and cities.
The more time went by, the more important drones became.
The Kremlin invested heavily in this technology, setting up new drone production plants and increasing the size and intensity of its attacks.
Ukraine was forced to find ways to defend against those strikes, and the Gepard turned out to be the most effective option of all.
Mere months after the system’s arrival in Ukraine, Kyiv’s soldiers were showering it with praise, describing how effective it was proving at countering Russian Shahed-style suicide drones.
Reports revealed that individual Gepard guns were taking out dozens of drones at a time, and some had even managed to down Russian cruise missiles, too.
As the years passed, the Gepard’s reputation grew, and even when Ukraine acquired and developed a greater range of air defense assets, constructing one of the most complex and layered defense networks on earth, the Gepard still stood out as arguably the most important piece of the puzzle.
And Ukraine’s
defenders didn’t need to modify the Gepard to make it effective.
They didn’t need to retrofit this allegedly “outdated” asset with new additions or superior technologies to bring it up to modern standards.
They simply used it exactly as it was inten ded to be used, to remarkable effect.
And there are four key reasons behind its success.
The first, and perhaps the most important, is cost.
Many of the most modern and sophisticated Western air defense systems are incredibly expensive.
They don’t just cost a lot to buy outright, but also to use, since many of them fire interceptor missiles that can cost several hundred thousand or even several million dollars each.
The PAC-3 missiles used in the US Patriot system, for example, cost around $4 million per unit.
That sort of price tag can be justified if you fire a PAC-3 against another missile of similar value, blowing it up in the air and saving dozens of lives in the process.
However, when you’re dealing with drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars to build and can be dispatched in swarms comprised of literally hundreds of units, the financial equation no longer makes sense.
That’s why modern air defense networks cannot be comprised entirely of the likes of Patriot missile batteries and similarly sophisticated systems launching expensive interceptors.
Every nation wanting to defend its airspace from drones requires alternatives that are significantly cheaper to use.
And the Gepard fits the bill perfectly.
Its 35mm shells are estimated to cost only hundreds of euros a piece.
That is a gigantic difference from the multi-million dollar price tags of interceptor missiles.
And it means that Ukraine can confidently fire hundreds and even thousands of these shells into the air to fend off Russia’s swarms without having to worry about racking up an impossible-to-afford bill in the process.
This leads us to the second big benefit of the Gepard: availability.
That includes both the availability of the systems themselves and the ammunition they use.
Germany had dozens of these systems available back when the war began, so it had little trouble sourcing them and sending them over to Ukraine almost right away.
Ammunition was a bit more challenging, as the neutral nation of Switzerland blocked Germany from sending its stocks of Swiss-made rounds to Kyiv and also restricted other military transfers to Ukraine, forcing Berlin to look for alternative options.
Fortunately, by December 2022, the largest German defense firm, Rheinmetall, had decided to set up a whole new factory to work around the Swiss ban.
Production of new shells began in Spring of 2023, and hundreds of thousands of rounds have since been supplied to Ukraine.
This is a stark contrast to many other air defenses and other weapons systems that have been sent to Ukraine by its Western allies.
In many cases, those systems were only provided in small numbers or came with limited amounts of ammunition, as there simply wasn’t enough available.
The missiles used in the Patriot system, for example, are so expensive to make and so in-demand across the globe that Ukraine has only been able to receive and use a relatively small amount.
It’s a similar story with other systems – many of which were sent to Kyiv but have since been left to gather dust, as the ammo they use simply isn’t available in sufficient quantities.
The country has suffered the effects of this munitions deficit crisis, having to pick and choose which systems it uses and which targets it strikes, while also leaning more heavily on its own domestically-developed defenses, rather than Western-supplied ones.
Russia has also attempted to take advantage of the situation, sending bigger and bigger swarms of drones and salvos of missiles at Ukraine, hoping that its opponent simply won’t have enough defenses to stop them all.
Fortunately, at least as far as the Gepard is concerned, there’s more than enough ammunition to meet Kyiv’s needs.
Of course, affordability and availability wouldn’t matter all that much if the Gepard wasn’t actually capable of doing what it needs to do: eliminating drones.
That leads us to the third advantage of this system: its performance.
Several years into the war, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that the Gepard is, in many ways, the ultimate Russian drone killer.
The Kremlin’s drones may be cheap to make en masse, but they have several clear downsides.
They’re relatively slow.
They fly at low altitudes.
They have noticeable radar signatures.
And they follow relatively predictable paths of flight.
That makes them the ideal targets for Cold War-era anti-aircraft guns like the Gepard.
The gun’s built-in radar systems can track and detect these targets before the guns take them out with short bursts of fire.
And even when Russia deploys its drones in vast quantities, hoping to saturate Ukraine’s radars and overwhelm its defenses, the Gepard copes surprisingly well.
It has the power to engage multiple targets one after another with excellent levels of efficiency and can literally blanket the air with shells, making it almost impossible for most drones to get from A to B without being blown up on the w ay.
The high rate of fire of these systems, combined with their vast ammunition stocks, makes them the optimal counter-measure for Russia’s saturation strikes, and while missile systems have to go through lengthy preparation and reload phases, Gepard s can simply keep firing as long as ammo is available.
Thanks to this, Gepards can be stationed at front line locations or deeper into home territory, around key pieces of infrastructure, like power stations, industrial facilities, ammunition depots, and transport hubs, scanning the skies for any signs of enemy activity, ready to fire in the
blink of an eye and defend the country’s most valuable locations and strategic sites.
Which brings us to the final advantage of the Gepard: its mobility.
This is a large -scale conflict.
The front lines extend for hundreds of miles in either direction, and Russia regularly bombards towns and cities across Ukraine, including areas hundreds of miles from the front.
That gives Ukraine an enormous amount of territory to defend, and it often has to reposition its most important assets as its tactics and priorities change.
Thankfully, since it’s a self-propelled system, not a towed one, the Gepard can go where it’s needed.
Unlike fixed installations, Ukraine can relocate these guns on-demand, moving them to help defend various cities as their threat levels evolve, protect critical infrastructure in response to intelligence about upcoming attacks, or even escort military formations as they move towards the front.
Once in place,
the Gepard can be depended on to maintain a strong defensive presence for as long as necessary, engaging any low-flying threats that enter its range.
Even Germany has been so impressed with the Gepard’s vital role in Ukraine that it has accelerated the development of its Skyranger program – a short range air defense turret system that takes many of its design cues from the Gepard and will be used to defend against drones and loitering munitions.
You can learn about another Western-supplied weapon that has made a massive comeback in Ukraine in this video, which looks at the UK’s so-called “Murder Pencil” missile system.
Alternatively, check out this video to learn about the state of play in the war today, with Ukraine in the ascendancy and Russia failing on all fronts.
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