“The audacity of the wheeled cannon is the maximum efficiency,” Beaudouin told Defense News. “You sacrifice nothing in terms of firepower, rate of fire, precision and range, and you’ve got a truck, armored all the same, but which is able to be nimble, which is very stealthy.”

Beaudouin was part of the French Army’s decision to buy an upgraded Caesar, so he might be suspected of bias toward wheels. But at least nine other countries, including the U.K. and Germany, decided to invest in self-propelled wheeled howitzers in the past year. Analysts said the Ukrainian experience is driving military planners’ interest.

...

Interest in wheeled self-propelled artillery flows from a desire for a “much higher degree of mobility and survivability” than towed guns, said Daniels. Military staff who see wheels as an attractive option over tracks “often define survivability in a broader way, as opposed to seeing it purely from the physical protection offered by onboard armor,” he added.

...

“Ukrainian use of shoot-and-scoot artillery fire suggests that the future lies in highly mobile artillery, be they tracked or wheeled,” Jones said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14513149/Russia-nightmare-Ukraine-best-artillery-guns.html

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[–] Vikthor@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

Interesting, the article somehow presents this as something new and groundbreaking, but wheeled self-propelled howitzer was introduced by Czechoslovakia and South Africa already in the 80's. And indeed Czech and Slovak howitzers derived from the original DANA are used by AFU since at least 2022.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

While I think the Bohdana is an effective weapons system and the engineers who made it happen deserve to be proud, I am not arguing this actually anything new, actually I think in a way it is kind of bitterly funny how not new this is.

The question one has to ask, since before even the beginning of the Ukraine war whether it was wise not to arm Ukraine with 155mm artillery systems and ammunition?

I won't pretend to know Cold War politics that well, but I know this much, even after it became clear Russia wasn't playing around with a limited military incursion into Ukraine nobody in the west seemed to want to talk about supplying 155mm artillery at all... which I guess I give a pass to the brainwormed techpress that can only pay attention to drones and AI and will predictably look right past the simple truth any artillery operator could tell you... yes all of those things are great especially as a companion to artillery..... but really nobody was talking about it even military types and it is just odd to me.

I know this sounds like I am exaggerating, but until a couple of months ago Ukraine had no capacity to threaten across a large area large 155mm barrages that could come from positions that will be abandoned by the time Russian forces catch up to respond.

Sure Russia has kamikaze drones... but once a truck gets onto a road it can travel fast enough to easily start to make it a headache to guess where it disappeared to by the time Russian assets come screeching over the airspace above.

Again the operative question isn't why is the 155mm Bohdana so effective in Ukraine, it is why did nobody in the west supply the Ukranian military with modern artillery and artillery stocks before? I don't really know the answer to that question but it is the one in my mind here.

Though I will say I think the Bohdana's design is near perfectly suited to the war it is hoping to help end (the compromises chosen seeming worth it), particularly the cab armored against light drone fpv attacks. One can imagine the natural counter to a truck based artillery system is a sedan 2 miles away with a couple of fpv drone operators who ambush the artillery as soon as it starts booming and gives away it's precise location, that armored cab is critical to surviving small ambushes and giving the crew time for nearby forces to clear the area. It is less about whether the gun gets damaged on the artillery and more that the artillery crew can leave that situation more confident that at least if they get attacked their vehicle provides some practical safety.

For the artillery crew, they understand of course that artillery is about how the area of circles grows greatly with each increase of radius.. and that any ambush like that will be rare if they continue to move randomly throughout the backline of the battlespace, but again when it comes down to that 5% of the time when friendly forces thought they had fully cleared and area and they hadn't.... the target on the minds of the enemy WILL be the artillery crew AND THEN the artillery piece.

You just aren't going to get people to man an artillery cannon anymore without an armored cab or deep trench system nearby, I think that much is clear and it is good that the Bohdana's designers understood that before most of the rest of the world seems to have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Pia0E7ygKuE

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ukraine, it is why did nobody in the west supply the Ukranian military with modern artillery and artillery stocks before?

Probably because EU trusted us Finns to keep the eastern border with our artillery, and we couldn't give it to Ukraine because we need it to keep Russia away.

https://www.quora.com/Does-Finland-indeed-have-the-largest-artillery-force-in-Western-Europe-If-so-why-Does-Finnish-military-doctrine-rely-heavily-upon-artillery

Very different landscapes though, 75% of Finland is covered by forests, whereas I think it's less so for Ukraine. Ya, 16.7%. There's pros and cons to the differences.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, the problem with Ukraine is you can slam armored columns through the landscape a lot easier.

As soon as things start to slow down in tougher terrain like you are describing in Finland artillery just becomes even more decisive because the coordinated movements of concentrated mechanized forces becomes more and more bottlenecked to having to pass through very obvious and predictable artillery targets you can precompute if you want.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5bhRe5oVBbY&pp=0gcJCb4JAYcqIYzv

This video just came out of Ukraine and demonstrates an example of how artillery becomes even more powerful with bottlenecks, a signficant vigorous Russian armored assault here is snagged up by fierce resistance.. in the form of mines, dragons teeth but then the critical devastating weapons system is the... dirt trench.

The dirt trench makes the Russian vehicles sit there for just long enough to figure out what to do for artillery to fire a salvo and rain down on their vulnerable, static position. Once the artillery locks onto the position pushing that avenue of assault becomes essentially a lost cause though the Russians seem to have a hard time realizing that in this case. The motorbikes may be a brutal way to attempt to gamble being able to pass through the artillery zone fast enough not to die to shrapnel, and if you don't value your life that may work for awhile..but there is a reason armored vehicles aren't going anywhere, assaulting somebody with artillery and artillery spotters like this is a daunting prospect and you better be ready to do so or you will get obliterated.

Without the artillery that dirt trench was just an annoying somewhat confusing delay, with the artillery it spelled the end of the entire operation and worse the entire existence of the people involved in this folly of an assault. That is how artillery changes things.

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