Belgium Orders 20 Skyranger 30 on Hooklift Platforms for Fixed-Site Air Defence

The hooklift is the configuration choice that matters. The German Army's Skyranger 30 rides a Boxer, and Rheinmetall said in August, as Signal No. 129 recorded, that part of that programme's delay came from the customer's request to bring the Boxer chassis to a modernised standard. Belgium's turret sits on a demountable platform that a truck sets down at the site it protects. Rheinmetall says talks began in June 2025 and the procurement ran in close consultation with the Netherlands. Fifty years ago the same business, then Oerlikon Contraves with Krauss-Maffei, supplied Belgium 36 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks.

Belgium now has three tiers of ground-based air defence under contract, each bought through a different channel, and none reaches the ballistic tier. Mistral 3 came through France's DGA; NASAMS came through the Dutch procurement agency, in a dispatch that named this Skyranger contract as the next document; the guns come from Rheinmetall. Signal No. 185 recorded the order beside the squadron's return. Until NASAMS arrives in 2027 and the guns at the end of 2028, the squadron's work is training crews, “in close collaboration with our Dutch colleagues, who have bought the same systems”, Francken said. A ballistic-missile buy would change the architecture rather than fill it; Francken has named it, but no system or channel.