The German government signed a contract with Rheinmetall to renew the production of ammunition for the Gepard SPAAG used by Ukraine.

Boris Pistorius, German Defense Minister, announced this before the meeting of NATO member countries’ Defense Ministers in Brussels.

Reuters reported about this.

“We will quickly set up our own production of Gepard ammunition at Rheinmetall. I am very happy we could guarantee the delivery of this important part of air defense,” Pistorius said.

In January, Armin Papperger, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rheinmetall, announced the transfer of ammunition to Ukraine.

This regarded 300,000 artillery shells, which the company would be able to produce by mid-summer 2023.

“We will complete the production of the first batch (tranche – ed.) of ammunition between June and July. By the middle of next year, we will deliver 300 thousand rounds of ammunition to Ukraine. This is a lot, therefore let’s hope that the Ukrainian challenge with ammunition for Gepard will be solved,” Armin Papperger said.

The issue of supplying ammunition for this equipment arose immediately after Germany announced the transfer of Gepard to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

This was due to the fact that Switzerland as a manufacturer of ammunition, does not wish to give permission to transfer them to Ukraine.

At the end of November 2022, it was announced that Rheinmetall, after acquiring Spanish ammunition manufacturer Expo Systems SA, planned to set up the production of 35 mm ammunition for Gepard anti-aircraft guns there.

According to Papperger, Expal can produce 250,000 to 300,000 artillery shells per year. Rheinmetall itself has a capacity of about 80,000.

Previously, Germany transferred two more Gepard anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine. Ukraine has already received a total of 32 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns from Germany.

The German government plans to hand over five more anti-aircraft guns. This is likely to happen by the end of the month.