The Bohdana: Ukraine's Secret Weapon of War

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Whoever had the foresight to preserve the prototype should get a medal.

Makes me feel a bit proud that a country in war chose Tatra chassis for their howitzer. There is no better truck for it and Tatra has long history of wheeled howitzers.

I was an artilleryman in the Danish army for 17 years, so I don't say this lightly: We need to do everything in our power to never get into a conflict where standard artillery sets the agenda. When you hear "front line", "trenches" and "artillery" in war news, shit has gone horribly horribly wrong. The Ukrainians have no choice but to fight the war they're in with the means they have. But for the collective west, who is "a little bit" more casualty adverse than Russia (and by necessity Ukraine) need to focus on dominating the sky utterly and completely. Standard artillery should be considered a tool for "mopping up" after the airforce has turned everything into a parking lot.

And Taiwan is over in the corner whispering to South Korea "Hey, you think you could license those designs and build us some of those?"

"You're not my real dad" is fucking genius. Well played, scriptwriter.

"Hey, remember all those Toyotas with heavy machine guns and things bolted on? Yeah, what if we scaled it up and used precision engineering instead of a dude with an angle grinder?" Yup, soldiers win fire fights, tanks win battles, but artillery win wars.

It's all about accuracy and mobility, the Bohdana has both. If this keeps up, Ukraine may become a major arms supplier, irony in its best form.

Artillery is one of the most valuable tools a military has, maybe even THE most valuable

You had a slight minor mistake on your map at around 17min… Sweden is already a NATO member

There was mention of the French Cesar unit but w/ about the Archer from Sweden, it's older. A Tatra truck chassis? ✓ out the Czech Dana. It's been around even longer & is in it's Dana II version.

Russia has never had a "major blue water" type of force. Russia's main blue water forces are its submarine squadrons of the Northern Fleet. Most of the Russian Navy is not much better than a coastal defense force. The one exception is the Admiral Kuznetsov, which has to be towed about because it does not have its own motive power due to - well - being an asset of the Russian Federation, which is a fate similar to a death sentence for equipment and munitions.

In the early 2000's Ukraine was the 4th largest arms exporter in the world after the US, Russia and China, hopefully they can get back to that level of production. Ukraine also built a very solid tank the Oplot including a NATO compliant version Turkey was considering, it is superior by quite a bit to the Russian T-90 but they never could afford to build it in quantity for themselves, the majority were supplied to foreign customers. They also produce a very nice APC and IFV but again they cannot afford to produce them in large numbers.

Beautiful piece. Reminds me of the Swedish Archer and has its own style

Simon's left the studio?? Crazy times we live in.

Funny, I thought Ukraine's secret weapon was Russian incompetence? Guess that isn't so secret, Megaprojects on...

I always find it funny that despite being shown time and time again that easily repairable assets that can use off the shelf non-military parts in a pinch are a major positive, militaries still go with the "oh no, we're just going to buy these parts from this company and this company alone, and their high standards mean we will gladly pay whatever they ask for them" solutions. Or maybe that's just the US?

Reminds me of the Swedish Archer system: a big honkin' artillery gun mounted on a heavy-duty truck which can go just about anywhere, pretty expeditiously, with an auto-loader to speed up the shooting before scooting to avoid the inevitable return fire.

3:14: Crimea is a peninsula. The isthmus connecting it to the mainland is the Isthmus of Perekop (according to Wikipedia).

Bohdana - The Little Howitzer That Could.