How Ukraine increases production of Bohdana howitzers

This is reported by Defense Express. 

Not only are the 2S22 Bohdana self-propelled artillery systems being produced at the rate of six per month, as officially announced by the Ukrainian President, but 30 units have already been manufactured in the war. At the same time, none of them have been lost, and there are only a few damaged ones that are being repaired.

In total, 25 enterprises and about 400 specialists are involved in the production of this self-propelled gun, while some critical components are now manufactured abroad and some production processes are decentralized. All this protects production from Russian attacks.

A significant increase in the number of people involved suggests that the manufacture of 2S22 Bohdana could be scaled up further.

This is extremely crucial in a situation when other 155-mm artillery must be waited for a long time because to a basic deficiency in donor countries.

According to publicly accessible sources, Ukraine may have received and purchased up to 400 self-propelled 155-mm systems and up to 250 trailed 155-mm howitzers. However, not all of these have been delivered, and there have been losses among those that have, as well as the issue of resource depletion.

The cost of the Bohdana air defense system is about USD 2.5 million. This is much cheaper than the current cost of Caesar, which is one of the cheapest on the market. If we look at the last known contracts for this French air defense system, its price tag in 2021 was USD 4.26 million, as exemplified by the contract with Belgium, and in the context of an arms shortage in 2023, it was USD 5.6 million, as exemplified by the proposal for Colombia.

But even with the potential to increase the number of Bohdana in the Armed Forces - especially now that this vehicle has been equipped with a shell loader - there remains an issue that is, oddly enough, quite advantageous.

Tatra's capacity to provide the T815 armored chassis, which has a more than a year-long production cycle, is currently surpassed by the ability to create an artillery unit. Additionally, this seems to be a "more pleasant" issue to deal with than the inability to build a sizable quantity of artillery pieces when it comes to the creation of Ukrainian weaponry during a war.

“That is why one of the additional chassis options for Bohdana is also MAN. And, for example, the HX series chassis from the joint MAN and Rheinmetall is offered for such a system as Archer. Given Rheinmetall's entry into Ukraine, this is another area of weapons localization. And to this we can add the quite logical way of resuscitating, even at this time and in extremely difficult conditions, the Ukrainian KrAZ truck (also part of NAUDI),” Defense Express notes. 

At the same time, the issue of the chassis quite logically leads to the development of a trailed version of the Bohdana, which is already underway.