✊ A lotta praise for Rheinmetall Skynex these days. Let me add a couple of IFs and BUTs... 👀

Skynex is great, and I really think AHEAD is a genius iea. Turret-mounted ku-band radars for targeting and a magnetically nozzle-programmable fuse that detonates a tungsten particle cloud at the exactly correct distance? Who wouldn't love that in their arsenal?

And so it seems that everybody is all golly about just how awesome Skynex is, with United24 famously reporting switft mastery and precise takedowns of Shaheds. Cool. Can we divest interceptor drones and micro missiles andlve on, then?

We can't. Because as amazing as Skynex and AHEAD (acctually) are - really, I'm a fan of the concept - they only add one puzzle piece to layered IAMD, while the scope, operational complexity and amount of threat profiles has skyrocketed during the Russo-Ukrainian war. Let me lay out why I think that that puzzle piece is tiny..

Its shortcomings are inherent to the system's design:

1️⃣ Shahed drones and hybrid warfare have evolved the IAMD challenge from largely point defense to mega-scale perimeter defense. 4km effective range is great for point defense for high-value targets, but that means that in many cases for saturation attacks, if the adversary doesn't want Skynex to engage the drones, it won't be able to, because they'll just avoit it.

2️⃣ At a price of >€70-90M, Skynex costs more than two to three Leopard 2A8, 5-7.5.000 Shaheds, or 70-90.000 interceptor drones, and it makes for an extremely high-value target. 1000 rounds per minute sounds cool, until you realize that it has only 100-250 ready rounds (incl. auto-reloader), and cost per engagement is estomated between €4k and €16k EXCLUDING system cost.

3️⃣ There's simply not enough of them to counter mass, and the production rate of both the system and its ammunition, I see this as a clear "rich nation" solution, and not one that effectively counters affordable mass with scalability and price sensitivity. And let's please not talk about the supply chain...

I love Skynex and AHEAD. It's the kind of stuff I thought to be almost science fiction as a kid. But in order to successfully deter saturation attacks, we need (among others) to produce solutions that can cover hundreds of not thousands of kilometers autonomously.

Here's a question for you: would Ukraine have bought the system if they wouldn't have gotten it donated by the German government?

What does it take for NATO nations to see that sophistication can cause great vulnerability in this new age?

Curious to hear your thoughts 💪