The Bohdana: Ukraine's Secret Weapon of War

Ukraine is a nation under siege, and a nation fighting its enemy from the back foot. Although it’s been propped up with NATO money, NATO weaponry, and all the fighting men it can find, standing firm for multiple years against an enemy that was supposed to crush it within days—it’s still fighting from behind. There are a few reasons for that, some to do with manpower, some to do with politics, some to do with leadership—but the Ukrainian asset that is in most critically short supply, is equipment.

Built up into a Soviet-style military power, using equipment on the ground and in the air that’s many decades old, the Ukrainian armed forces have made a habit of improvisation, creativity, and working outside the box, in order to make do with what they’ve got. But no amount of tactical ingenuity can fix that broader problem by itself.

Yet even in the years before the Russo-Ukrainian War began, Kyiv was working on a piece of kit with the potential to change everything. Its name is the Bohdana, and it’s not a fighter plane, it’s not a tank, and it’s not a ship; it’s an artillery piece, a self-propelled howitzer firing explosives at a range of multiple kilometers from behind the front lines. Yet as unassuming as the Bohdana may be, it’s shown itself to be the kind of tactical asset that can punch way above its own weight. Cutting-edge, highly effective, and more and more numerous by the day, the Bohdana is among the rare tools with the potential not just to change the course of battles, but one day, to even change the course of the war.

Building the Bohdana

The Bohdana traces its history back to 2016, a time when Kyiv was not yet at war, but was already all too familiar with the feeling of standing in Vladimir Putin’s crosshairs. For two years prior, the internationally recognized Ukrainian isthmus of Crimea had been held under Russian occupation, after it was annexed by Moscow in 2014. Making matters worse, Ukraine’s eastern region, the Donbas, was completely outside of Kyiv’s control, with a local insurgency run amok and supported by Russian soldiers, tanks, and heavy artillery.

The situation was dire for Ukraine, where just a couple of years prior to the whole debacle, voters had boldly declared their intent to move their nation closer to the West and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Now, the country was doing its best to stay afloat against a much more powerful enemy, grabbing it by its ankles and attempting to pull it underwater for good.

Ukraine had something of an arms industry of that time, a relic of its Soviet past, when heavy industrialization had defined much of the country and its tremendous agricultural bread basket had defined almost all the rest. That industry, though, was focused mainly on reproduction, be it Ukrainian-made versions of international firearms, artillery shells, mortars, tanks, or anything else. Some were an improvement on the technology that Ukraine had been given, like the Neptune anti-ship missile, itself a weapon based on the Soviet-made Kh-35.

Others were basically reproductions of old Soviet kit, or sometimes, kit developed and designed by Western nations or other arms manufacturers around the world. But now, Ukraine was on the precipice of war, with no way to know when exactly that war would break out, and every reason to expect that it would break out eventually. Knowing that NATO was one part hamstrung in its ability to help, and one part unwilling to place itself at odds with Moscow directly, Ukraine set to work designing weapons and warfighting equipment that would see it through the storm to come.

The Bohdana wasn’t the only piece of hardware to emerge from that effort, but it was the best. Drawn up early in 2016, the Bohdana was assembled at the Kramatorsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant, cobbled together from as many pieces of relatively advanced kit as the plant could get its hands on. The prototype they built wouldn’t be revealed for two more years, until July of 2018, by which time, live-fire tests were almost ready to begin. Those tests ran in August of that year, around which time Ukraine’s defense minister was apparently so impressed with what he saw that he announced that the Bohdana would go straight into service. Late that month, the Bohdana prototype was unveiled for the first time, during Ukraine’s annual Independence Day parade in Kyiv.

The design that Ukraine had envisioned was a utilitarian one, a big, heavy gun mounted on a Ukrainian-built six-by-six truck chassis. Up front, a truck cabin housed a driver and seats for five total crew members, encased in a shell of enhanced armor that would afford it resistance to direct gunfire and shrapnel. The truck was equipped with a computerized control and targeting system, plus a shell loading device, with the capacity to carry up to 20 rounds on its own internal storage.

It utilized an automatic gun-laying system to set down its howitzer and find the proper angle to fire, and its onboard ballistic calculator could show the arc of a fired shell with high degrees of accuracy. It sat at a total weight of 28 metric tonnes, or 62,000 pounds, it was pulled along by a roughly 400-horsepower engine, and it boasted an impressive operational range of 1,200 kilometers, or 750 miles. It drove at speeds up to eighty kilometers per hour, while its suspension could handle trenches a meter deep, steps point-seven meters high, vertical grades of sixty percent, and side slopes of thirty percent, alternately pushing through the water at depths of a bit over a meter.

But the central element of the Bohdana was precisely the one you’d expect of a piece of heavy artillery: its main gun. Equipped with a 155-millimeter howitzer, the Bohdana features a respectable rate of fire, at five rounds per minute. When firing high-explosive incendiary and armor-piercing shells, it can launch them at an exceptionally good range of up to 42 kilometers, or twenty-six miles.

When firing rocket-assisted ammunition, that range increases to 50 kilometers, or thirty-one miles. Yet even the Bohdana’s range wasn’t the only impressive thing about it; instead, the real trick was the ammunition it was meant to use. The Bohdana’s big gun was built to the standards of NATO, at that 155-millimeter round size, instead of the 152-millimeter standardized round size that had been the old Soviet standard—and thus Ukraine’s standard—for decades.

The subtext here was crystal-clear, when it came to Ukraine’s international posture: that even despite the difficulty of procuring NATO shells, it was worth either jumping through hoops to get them, or manufacturing them in-house, instead of relying on the same ammunition as the Russians. Far from just a sort of prideful, “you’re-not-my-real-dad” sort of rebuke, the change had real practical benefits when it came to the weapon itself, and tacitly indicated to NATO that practices like ammunition-sharing were something that Kyiv very much wanted to be part of.

And when compared to the stuff that Ukraine had in its arsenal around that same time, the difference was night and day. During the mid-2010s, Ukraine had primarily been reliant on two pieces of towed artillery: the 2A65 Msta-B, designed around the early 1980s, and the 2A36 Giatsint-B, designed around the late 1960s. Not only was the Bohdana obviously much more modern, which was a massive plus, and self-propelled, which was a massive plus, but it offered a significant edge in range over both of those artillery pieces.

The relatively limited number of self-propelled howitzers Ukraine did have around this time, had an even more restricted range, so for Ukraine to suddenly come into the possession of this new toy, was of massive tangible benefit to the country. Their new piece of hardware would be far closer to the French-made CAESAR, a model after which Ukraine appeared to base the Bohdana on, and a model that, funny enough, the Bohdana now fights alongside. Even the far bigger and better-equipped Russian military didn’t have much that could match that range, with the artillery that could, being only in relatively limited service ever since the time that the Bohdana was designed.

Weapon of War

After it was unveiled to the global public in 2018, the Bohdana spent years being assessed, tested, and readied for main-line production—but it was never reproduced. And when, in February 2022, a massive Russian force was given the order to proceed with its invasion of Ukraine, that seemed as if it might have been a tragic turn of events. Ukraine seemed to have had a great idea with the Bohdana, but it just didn’t arrive fast enough, and now, with Russian troops marching across the border in the tens of thousands, it was too late.

Ukraine was going down, and the Bohdana was going down with it, so just after Russia’s invasion began, Kyiv issued an order. The sole prototype of the Bohdana was to be destroyed, as the only way to ensure that it wouldn’t fall into Russian hands.

Except Ukraine didn’t go down, and lucky for Kyiv, the manufacturers of the Bohdana seemed to have a sixth sense for when not to follow orders. Instead, the prototype was moved far into Ukraine’s back lines, and handed over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine shortly after. When Ukraine’s imminent destruction morphed into an unexpected set of stalls on the Russian side, and then a complete failure of the Russian advance, Ukraine surged back into the fight, and the Bohdana came with it. Within a few months, news emerged via Forbes that the Bohdana had been deployed to the front lines, and was being used as a part of the massive dueling artillery battles that characterized much of the Ukraine war. There, it joined a spirited Ukrainian defense, where special operators, drone crews flying small quadcopters, and mass numbers of friendly civilians were working together to spot Russian targets, where artillery could shower down hell onto the invading force. In those battles, the Bohdana offered Ukraine a critical advantage wherever it showed up. While the rest of Ukraine’s artillery was directly comparable to Russia’s, and could draw Russian guns into a prolonged exchange, the Bohdana could sit kilometers back from the main artillery batteries, fire over both the Ukrainian and the Russian guns, and still have enough range to hit targets several kilometers behind the front lines.

The Bohdana’s crowning moment came in June of 2022, when it played a central role in forcing a Russian withdrawal from a strategically middling, but symbolically critical outpost in the Black Sea, Snake Island. That’s the place where, on the first day of the Russian invasion, a defiant group of Ukrainian border guards entered the nation’s wartime folklore, telling off an incoming Russian warship in the most unambiguous of terms. Russia had spent months occupying the small island ever since, but when the Bohdana arrived, all that changed.

Russia had built Snake Island into a fortress, all too aware of its symbolic value to the Ukrainians, and it had invested anti-air and electronic warfare systems to keep a radius around the island. Ukrainian rockets and missiles had proved ineffective, as had an attempted troop landing. But shooting from the shores of the Danube River, too far away for Russia to hit without using aircraft, and moving around so often that Russian aerial assets couldn’t pinpoint her, the Bohdana fired across a gap some forty kilometers wide and rained fire down onto Snake Island.

Every night for over a week, the Bohdana, alongside some donated French-made CAESAR systems of the type we mentioned previously, were floated out on pontoon platforms and driven out onto specially built crossings. Much of the infrastructure to pull off the operation had to be rebuilt every day as it was washed away, but it wouldn’t matter. Because the Bohdana’s artillery shells couldn’t be shot down on approach, the long cascade of dozens of shells each night was enough to wear down the Russian defenders.

Ukrainian sources called it, “monotonous destruction,” and right they were. The day after the Russians withdrew, counterattacks rained down upon the Ukrainian artillery that had been used for the attack—but by then, the single Bohdana was already gone.

The Snake Island affair was a wake-up call for Ukrainian forces, on just how useful of an asset that the Bohdana could be. Not only was it more than capable of firing across the extra-long distances it had promised, but it was easy to repair in the field, including even with tractor parts. It had proved far hardier than the finicky French models, and it had done a better job pushing the limits of its own engineering than most other platforms would have been capable of.

It was consistently able to hit its targets in no more than two strikes, one to test and one to destroy, and its automation technology was shown to make a meaningful addition on the battlefield. After that, President Zelenskyy himself took a personal interest in the Bohdana project, and its future, as not just a single prototype but an entire line of vehicles, began to take form.

Future of an Emerging Asset

According to Ukrainian sources, the original Bohdana prototype was destroyed not long after the Snake Island affair, sometime around the autumn of 2022. But by then, the howitzer had become enough of a Ukrainian priority that the first prototype wouldn’t be the last. In January of 2023, Ukraine’s Defense Minister at the time announced that the Bohdana was going into full production, with the intent of making up to six of the beasts per month if possible. That initiative apparently got up to speed in short order; according to Ukrainian media, some thirty of the howitzers had been produced by the end of 2023, with more on the way.

Now that it’s on the production line, the Bohdana has gone through a handful of critical changes. It replaces the prototype’s original 6x6 chassis with either a newly designed 6x6, or a larger 8x8 chassis made by the Czech company Tatra. By November of that year the Bohdana’s howitzer was equipped with an auto-loader, a critical element in more advanced howitzers that most self-propelled artillery in the Russo-Ukrainian war is lacking.

All the while, the price of the system has stayed low at roughly two and a half million US dollars per unit, roughly half of what the French CAESAR would fetch on the global arms market. Not only that, but Ukraine was hard at work making itself a towable version too, cutting out the need to build a fully functioning heavy truck every time Ukraine wanted a Bohdana. By early 2024, the rate of production had increased, with Ukraine purportedly now churning the things out at ten vehicles per month.

That rate was expected to increase even further as of May 2024, although at the time of writing, one month later, there’s not yet any reputable sources confirming such an uptick.

In battle, details on the Bohdana’s current exploits are harder to come by than the Snake Island affair, but occasional insights do emerge from time to time. In September of 2023, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty got to directly observe a Bohdana in action, firing on Russian positions and skulking around battlefields to help Ukrainian troops gain an advantage. There, the Bohdana was observed employing so-called “shoot and scoot” tactics, basically doing exactly what that name suggests: firing an artillery shell, and getting the hell out of range before return fire comes back in.

Since that time, the Bohdana has become even more critical because of the ammunition it uses. Supplies of Soviet-standard 152-mm artillery shells have dropped critically low over the last half-year or so, in a saga that anybody who follows our sister channel, Warographics, knows all too well by now. The Bohdana, though, is a different story, running on NATO-standard shells that Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, Warsaw, and other NATO backers can supply far easier, and at a relatively low cost per shell.

Now that Western aid is finally surging back to the Ukrainian front lines to stabilize the battlefront, it’s the Bohdana that’s likely to lead the charge in striking back, picking away at Russian assets even somewhat removed from the heat of battle.

For the Bohdana’s short-term future, it’s a platform with exactly one task: do everything in the combined power of its hardware and its operators, to avoid a Ukrainian defeat in the ongoing war. With a whole lot of luck, the Bohdana might graduate from the task of averting a defeat, in hopes of pursuing a total victory, although that will take time. But whether it’s on defense or on offense, the next few years for the Bohdana seem relatively straightforward: fight a war, and try not to get blown up.

But it’s when we turn to the long view, that the Bohdana gets even more interesting. If we assume that some version of Ukraine will exist after the war, which, barring a complete defensive collapse, does seem likely, then post-war Ukraine will have the Bohdana firmly under its control. With that piece of intellectual property, it’ll bring a whole lot to offer the rest of the world, in the form of a battle-tested, highly effective modern system that’s proven it can handle the rigors of war, at uncommonly low prices.

Europe, and the combined forces of NATO, are shifting toward a heightened defense posture every day, making ready for what Western intelligence estimates could be a Russian offensive action on NATO soil in the next three to five years. Poland, the three small Baltic states, and other front-line nations like Romania and Finland are already working to expand and refine their arsenals, and with the Bohdana on the market, those nations will have something to seriously consider when it’s time to think about picking up a howitzer.

Post-war Ukraine appears highly likely to become an arms manufacturer at large scale, and the country has ample directions to focus its energies when that time comes. Its aerial drones have changed the nature of front-line warfare, while its sea drones, which we’ve written about at length on our Warographics channel, have showed how smaller and navally underequipped nations can threaten a major blue-water navy for years at a time. Building the ability to manufacture not just drones, but Bohdanas, at large scale will be a critical objective for Ukraine, where, even if the nation’s first war with Russia ends, a second war will seem all too likely for years to come. And because of just how well the Bohdana has performed thus far, the nations of NATO, along with other customers in the global arms world, will most likely be willing to pay for as many Bohdanas as Ukrainian assembly lines can produce.

For now, the Bohdana is a rare sight on Ukrainian battlefields, let alone across the world. By all accounts, and by the Ukrainian government’s own admission, it is a platform that should not have survived the opening days of the Russian invasion. But over the course of the war so far, the Bohdana has showed how even one single artillery piece can turn the tide of battles, and when one, turns into ten, turns into a hundred, and then into a thousand, it may well show how artillery can turn the tide of a war.

Key Takeaways

• Ukraine’s Bohdana artillery piece is a self-propelled howitzer designed to fire explosives from behind front lines.
• The Bohdana was developed in 2016, initially as a prototype, and has since proven effective in Ukrainian defense efforts.
• Ukraine’s Bohdana uses NATO-standard 155-mm shells, aligning with Western allies and avoiding reliance on Soviet-standard ammunition.
• The Bohdana played a crucial role in forcing Russian withdrawal from Snake Island in June 2022.
• Ukraine has ramped up production of the Bohdana, with plans to manufacture up to ten units per month.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: The Bohdana: Ukraine’s Secret Weapon of War
• https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7764
• https://mil.in.ua/en/news/experimental-2s22-bohdana-self-propelled-howitzer-is-destroying-the-invader-forces/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/05/07/ukraine-made-exactly-one-copy-of-its-best-cannon-it-just-joined-the-war/
• https://medium.com/the-erudite-elders/ukraine-builds-its-own-caesar-inspired-howitzer-the-2s22-bohdana-4850630f2ba5
• https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russian-forces-have-withdrawn-snake-island-2022-06-30/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20230328000736/https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2023/02/13/7388834/
• https://www.armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/conflicts-in-the-world/russia-ukraine-war-2022/army-of-ukraine-to-receive-more-local-made-2s22-bohdana-155mm-self-propelled-howitzers
• https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/detailed_photos_of_2s22_bohdana_howitzer_appeared_resolving_the_questions_about_the_loading_mechanism-9503.html
• https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-russia-bohdana-howitzer-weapon/32597550.html
• https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/ukraines_bohdana_155mm_howitzer_production_rate_doubled_and_keeps_growing-10220.html
• https://defence-blog.com/ukraine-unveils-secret-production-of-new-bohdana-artillery-systems/
• https://www.army-technology.com/projects/2s22-bohdana-howitzer-ukraine/?cf-view
• https://mil.in.ua/en/articles/bohdana-acs-ukraine-s-pursuit-of-optimal-chassis-or-artillery-build-up/
• https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31938#:~:text=The%20development%20of%20the%20Bohdana,Several%20challenges%20delayed%20its%20deployment
• Hero image source by Kremlin.ru / openverse, by.

Related Coverage