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.

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

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.

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.

Bohdana - The Little Howitzer That Could.

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

Field Artillery…always has been and always will be the king of battle!

Not a new idea the Swedes bolted an artillery gun to a Volvo dump truck.

07:26 is that you giving a helping hand Simon

It is the spiritual successor to the YaG 10 (29K), the most formidable weapon of war ever designed. "Komrad, we put big gun on back of milk truck."

I think the more important part of the package is their artillery app. They use it with every artillery piece, new and old and it helps them make more accurate shots, faster and with the use of drone

Why no fuzzy dice? A truck always needs fuzzy dice.

This is the very same principle as the french _CaESAr_ . In fact, these two weapons are so similar from a distance that the Russians have *confused* them on several occasions, both on the battlefield and in their propaganda. This is also a quite similar concept as the more automatized Swedish _Artillerisystem 08 Archer_ .

15:31 Mentioning Warsaw and highlighting Czech Republic ;) :D

1:35 - Mid roll ads 3:00 - Chapter 1 - Building the bohdana 8:55 - Chapter 2 - Weapon of war 13:10 - Chapter 3 - Future of an emerging asset

Artillery is the King of Battle.

A great Megaprojects video! (from a viewer and fan for many years) A great source of hope for those of us who support Ukraine.

Vertical grades up to 60%!?!? Wowzers 👀

I have been following the war since the beginning and I had no clue about this. Secret indeed!

Outstanding contents. Extremely informant. Absolutely enjoyable presentation.😊thanks

Excellent and very informative. Thanks.

Lets go! Monday Megaprojects!

I imagine driving that thing off road is a nightmare. The gun weigh is so far back, the rear drive-axle is bearing far more than the forward drive-axle Unless it has wide foot rear outriggers, the chassis is not going to handle the stress for long. Even cross supports and double chassis will struggle to get 5 years

Simon I speak for many when I say the war in Ukraine is certainly revealing many new weapons, and vehicles. It’s an entire testing ground.

Great segment of the "little cannon" that could.

Calling Tatra a tech company is such a backhanded compliment lmao

How secret can it actually be if it's on YT?

Glory to Ukraine, Love from America!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for work and honest

11:05 - Legend! 😅 👏 👏 👏 👏

Artillery and trench warfare... weird how we're back to that WW1 style of battle despite how badly it went last time it was done en masse like this. Perhaps the addition of small drones makes the difference. Or is it because the artillery is more mobile now than it was back then? It would be an interesting topic to cover on Warographics. The hows and whys behind the success with trench warfare now vs during WW1. Or am I mistaken in my perception that it's working better now than it did back then?

First. A huge warographics, megaprojects, etc. Fan. Excited to be early 🙌 😊

Who's that at 7 minutes and 26 seconds? Gaslighting that I can appreciate 😂

Interesting video. At 7:37, it's not a 2s22 but a Caesar howitzer.

To quote Napoleon. "God fights on the side with the best artillery."

@15:32 You said Warsaw. That's in Poland but on the map you highlighted Czechia.

thank you!

This statement is usually used in referring to Mortars but yeah, the Bohdana is a despenser of "High Angle Hell"! Many thanx Simon 👍👍

The banana is a great artillery piece lol At least thats what I hear from half the time in this vid 😂

Seeing Simon and sunlight in the same frame feels strange.

Nice piece of equipment.

And on that note, there's a humvee with a 105mm howitzer on it for lighter, more mobile artillery.

Avoid defeat and victory in one sentence is a mouthful

I'm a armored cav man, not a cannon cocker, but it seems like a pretty sweet piece. And if it gets top marks in the Rule of Cool department.

The US and other countries have for years made precision guidance kits (PGK) for 155m shells that replace the standard fuze with a GPS guidance system and small fins that are able to give otherwise dumb artillery rounds the precision and first round kill capacity approaching that of the $100k Excalibur 155mm round. The PGK itself only runs about $7.5k per unit. A base bleed 155mm round would add about $2k to the price, and a rocket assisted round about $5K-$10k. So for the price of a single Excalibur round, Ukraine could fire 5-10 GPK rounds. There would be no need for a ranging round. In fact in a German test that fired 9 GPK tipped 155m rounds all 9 landed within 10m, 8 out of 9 rounds landed within 3m of the target, 5 within a single meter, and 1 went through the roof of the old clapped out SUV being used as a target from a distance of 40 km. No corrections were applied between rounds. All were simply programmed with the same GPS coordinates. Besides being cheaper than the Excalibur, PGKs are simpler and faster to make and so many more artillery rounds could be fired with this level of accuracy and precision. If enough of these PGK could be delivered to Ukraine, within a few weeks Russia wouldn't have any artillery pieces or heavy mortars left since the combination of anti battery radar and these guided rounds means that every time Russia's shorter range artillery pieces fired a round, a Bohdana (or Caesar, Archer or Panzerhaubitze 2000) with longer range than the Russians would drop a guided round down their throats and then scoot just in case Russian happened to have an artillery battery within range.

My friend, you need to bounce your final mix at 12-15dB lower. Sorry to give a sound note, I hate it when I get them

Man i love that truck. Love to have one.

That's pretty badass. Maybe license it out so other countries can help build them?

Thanks, Megaprojects.

Change the course of the war? Its a howitzer on a truck, lets calm down a bit.

I think it's important to point out a few things. 1. Zmiyiniy Island is a very small island, but its a pretty large target. More importantly, it is a stationary target (duh). 2. The island is fairly flat and very baren. There is practically nothing there, and more importantly, there is no natural shelter. 3. The island is just within range. 4. This is perhaps the most important part: there really is no air infrastructure on the island and Russians would never commit an real warship to the task of protecting the island. (After what has happened to the flagship of the Black Sea fleet) 5. Bohdana is a fast maneuverable thing, for an artillery price that is. It can be fiered from Ukrainian controlled territory, with plenty of ground support (spotters, camouflage, correction, local guides) All things together make Bohdana, or a similar spg, a perfect tool for bombardment of Zmiyiniy island. The fact that it was so successful only prooves that if tou ahve a perfect tool for the job, the job will get done. To put it bluntly, the russians were a big beetle, sitting on a bullseye of a target of an olimpic shooter. Bombardment of Zmiyiniy is a good real-world test, but it should only be treated as a proof of concept. It should not be used to predict future battlefield success. Though I'd say Fuck Yeah Ukrainians!

7:27 - There's Simon working on shells.

'not in a war' in 2016, after battle of Debaltseve, the largest battle in Europe since Balkan wars or maybe even ww2, 'not in a war', understood you, sir

Artillery, still king of the battlefield after all these centuries.

Denmark gave all their Ceasars (32 units) to Ukraine - they should buy Bodana as replacement units. For $2.5 million each they could order and pay for a 100 units now with delivery occurring over the first few years the war is over. That would help finance production at this, the most critical period.

I was looking down and thought you said Banana for a moment!

first things what i think was: "who build that played to many Crossout". Then i inform me about these and that peace of weapon is nice.

# Yes, we have no Bohdanas #

Great story

When they lose we can point to your video 'revealing' their secret weapon.

15:59 very interesting human interface panel 🤔 looks like an ATM keypad with an industrial type controller. every single button, aside from the keypad, is panel mount arcade style.

USMC has been training "run and gun " with 81MM mortar since 98. we had 8n guns 2 rounds adjust then 6-8 rounds 8 guns FFE then run off. shorter range for sure but we trained to bring the hate in hummers

At first I thought UK shipped a couple of Archers to the Ukraine. Didn't know it was home made.

Well now the secret is out. Great job.

I was skeptical about the video title but this turns out to be an interesting and infromative video about an impressive artillery piece - that it is Ukraine designed and made makes it all the more impressive !

Recommendation: Australian Slinger Drone.

Oh dam! Yeah I heard Brazil was going to start manufacture of these in ~2027. I believe they plan on making a modified variant with a larger canon called the "Bohdanka-donk"

For detail - "Bohdana" is Ukrainian female name. Initial models were built on Ukrainian-made KrAZ heavy truck but serial production vehicle can be mounted on Czech Tatra or German MAN.

When your secret weapon is a truck with a cannon strapped to the back (with no ammo, fuel or drivers) you're a bit screwed 😅

The manufacturer wanted to finish testing, but neither the MoD nor the manufacturer could agree who was financially responsible for procuring and importing foreign 155mm ammunition. And, for nearly five years, nothing was tested until it was finished it in 2021. Instead of having dozens or hundreds of Bohdana available in February 2022. there was just the one prototype.

Motorized long range artillery is a requirement for shoot and scoot tactic needed to survive recon and combat drone based warfare (towed artillery is more vulnerable to drone warfare ) - newer one uses GPS based targeting computer. Using common 155mm shells give it good NATO range.

When your enemy has to send prisoners to war, it has lost.

I'm a 20 year artillery veteran. We liked to refer to this type of gun as a GOAT.... a Gun On A Truck

The Ukrainian Bohdana 155mm artillery armored truck is practical.

There's reason Artillery is called "The Voice of Kings."

Secret, meaning "no one ever saw at least one"?

NATO already have swedish Archers beside Caesars since someone had bright idea of stirring up trouble in Europe and made Sweden with Finland join NATO for real. Bohdana would be still great costeffective addition though.

Ever do an episode on the cCN Tower?

I keep hearing him call it the banana, fear the war banana

I love the remote control, ten feet of string!

Hang on a 6x6 Tractor? At 06’20” those are 8x8!

These look pretty similar to the French CAESAR self propelled gun.

Good video, thank you. Technicals on steroids.

A Wonder Weapon that will change the war realy?

Artillery, giving u the lesson about that in War, all that matters is having the biggest gun that can bring the biggest boom at the biggest distance on the target with thr biggest importance

please can someone help me identify the armored vehicle at 7:45 mark? Both the tank on the right (close to camera) and especially the one in the center, it has a soldier standing in front of it. Thanks