Designed by Rheinmetall, the Skyguard 30 missile-artillery anti-aircraft strategy is armed with a 30-millimeter cannon and an anti-aircraft rocket launcher. Thanks to its weight of about 2 t, it can be installed on armored transporters, tanks or trucks. The second model could be seen at the arms fair in Kielce.
Rheinmetall, a well-known maker of tanks and armored vehicles, has been expanding its operations to anti-aircraft systems for respective years. The key to this marketplace was the acquisition of the Swiss company Oerlikon Contraves, producing tiny caliber cannons (20-millimeter anti-aircraft Oerlikons were the primary weapon of this kind of US Army from planet War II until the Vietnam War).
In the defence of heaven
Based on the technology, the Oerlikon experts from Rheinmetall developed anti-aircraft systems with 35 mm caliber cannons that hit the marketplace as Skyshield 35, as well as Skyranger (or Skyranger 35), designed to be installed on truck chassis or armored transporters.
Skyranger 35's weakness was weight. The tower strategy (armata with radar) weighed about 4.5 t, meaning that it could not be installed on smaller and lighter chassis. That is why the German maker decided to make a much lighter Skyguard anti-aircraft system. It weighs only about 2 t. It was equipped with a smaller, due to the fact that a 30-millimeter, cannon with a scope shorter than its 35-millimeter "cusin". Skyguard 30 can harm targets up to 3000 m away, firing up to 1,200 rounds per minute.
In fresh years Rheinmetall has presented respective versions of the fresh weapon – a cannon installed on Boxer transporters and Lynx combat infantry cars. At this year's Eurosatory Fair in Paris For the first time, the company showed 2 further models – on the Leopard 2 tank and on the RMMV HX 8 × 8 truck.
Jelcz's competitor
And there is no case that it was the last version of Skyguard that the German company decided to present at the global Defence manufacture Salon in Kielce. Specialists from Rheinmetall could not neglect to know that the Polish Armed Forces Group intends to show the construction during the fair, i.e. Anti-aircraft Jelcza SA 35 (with 35 mm cannon)which will be a direct competition for their product.
Representatives of the German company convinced MSPO that their weapons have a shorter scope than the Polish SA 35, but offer a much wider and more modern package of ammunition, better suited (than 35-millimeter missiles) to combat tiny targets, specified as drones or mortar shells.
Rheinmetall specializes in the production of tanks and armored vehicles, producing Leopard 2 tanks, wheeled armored transporters Boxer, Lynx combat infantry wagons. He is besides a planet leader in the production of tank cannons that are created in Germany or on licenses abroad.
