The air defense complex worth more than 100 million USD was ‘powerless’ against Russian UAVs

Magazine Stern Germany on July 2, citing an internal assessment of the Ukrainian army, said that the Skynex air defense system, developed and manufactured by Rheinmetall Group, once performed much worse than expectations.

The incident occurred on April 1, when a Skynex complex on Ukrainian payroll encountered many technical problems and was unable to intercept enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during a Russian raid on an industrial facility in western Ukraine.

The facility is protected by two Skynex batteries, including a total of eight combat vehicles carrying 35 mm guns, two X-TAR3D surveillance radars and two command vehicles. This arrangement is intended to create fire zones that cover each other, causing targets entering the defense area to be attacked by at least two artillery platforms at the same time.

During the raid on April 1, radars were said to have detected two Russian UAVs at a distance of approximately 20 km. An aircraft had entered the fire zone and should have been targeted by at least two artillery platforms. However, only one artillery shell was fired and did not hit the target.

The Russian UAV then hit infrastructure belonging to an unnamed company and exploded before the helplessness of the Skynex complex, according to Stern.

The German magazine said that in an internal assessment, the Ukrainian military identified technical problems and problems in target capture as the reason why the interception effort failed. Three gun platforms stopped working after just a few minutes due to problems with the hydraulic system, radar and loading equipment. Only two out of eight combat vehicles are capable of reliably tracking targets.

According to Stern, the Ukrainian military report concluded that the Skynex complex has “a low level of operational readiness, is extremely unreliable” and does not meet the technical specifications announced by the manufacturer. “This is a disaster that should never have happened,” a witness to the incident told Stern.

Rheinmetall declined to comment on specific combat data, citing security reasons. However, the company said Ukraine assessed that the Skynex system had “demonstrated outstanding efficiency”.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has not yet commented. This agency once released a video of Skynex shooting down 6 Russian Geran-2 UAVs, but it is unclear whether it was in one battle or many different battles.

An anonymous German official argued that too few Skynex systems have been deployed to draw conclusions about overall combat effectiveness. This person also raised the possibility that crew errors contributed to the failure of the interception attempt.

Military site Defense Express of Ukraine believes that a single incident is not enough to draw conclusions about Skynex’s overall performance. “It is possible that maintenance issues, scarcity of spare parts or other operational factors contributed to the above results,” the site said.

Skynex is a point defense system, designed to intercept UAVs, rockets and mortar shells.

Each complete system includes the Skymaster combat management complex, the X-TAR3D surveillance radar, the enemy-us identification device, the MSU complex equipped with active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and panoramic electronic-optical sensors, and a series of combat vehicles equipped with single-barrel Millennium or double-barreled 35 mm GDF009 TREO guns.

Combat vehicles are equipped with their own radar and optical-electronic sensors, allowing them to independently track and shoot down targets within their fire range.

Rheinmetall said in 2023 that the German government had ordered two Skynex complexes with a total value of 212 million USD to protect the capital Berlin. Both systems were then transferred by Germany to Ukraine in January 2024 and April 2025, respectively.