The Ministry of Defence on February 24 announced it authorised the Defence Forces to procure more 155 mm BONUS Mk II special munitions for anti-tank weapons of the artillery. The ammunition will be supplied by the French manufacturer Nexter Munitions.
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BONUS is an artillery-launched, fire-and-forget munition capable of successfully destroying any armored vehicle (Picture source: Army Recognition)
The overall value of the procurement without VAT is about EUR 35 million, and it will be financed from the supplementary budget, which included additional funding for rapidly launched defence materiel procurements.
155 BONUS (BOfors NUtating Shell) is a 155 mm artillery cluster round, developed in cooperation between Bofors of Sweden and Nexter of France, designed for a long-range, indirect fire top attack role against armored vehicles. Development on BONUS began in early 1985 as a study project for the Swedish Defence Material Administration, with an initial expectation of development completion by 1989 and production start by 1990. By 1990, the development completion date had slipped to 1992. The BONUS base bleed carrier shell contains two submunitions, which descend over the battlefield on winglets and attack hardened targets with explosively formed penetrator warheads.
The shell round consists of a 47-kilogram (104 lb) heavy artillery projectile containing two autonomous, sensor-fused, fire-and-forget submunitions. When fired from a 52-caliber barrel, a BONUS shell can travel up to 35 km (22 mi). After the submunition is released, it opens moving winglets controlled by the navigation system. While descending, the submunition rotates, scanning the area below with multi-frequency infrared sensors and LiDAR that compares the detected vehicles with a programmable target database. The submunitions each contain a high-penetration EFP warhead for use against even heavy armored fighting vehicles like main battle tanks.
BONUS rounds have been sent to Ukraine in aid packages by France and potentially Sweden and Norway. Although rumors mentioned a kill on a Russian Pantsir-S1 gun-missile air defense system on July 5th, 2022, it turned out that it was the SMArt 155 that hit it. In January 2023, photos showed a 155mm BONUS submunition in Ukraine. This is the first confirmed proof of their use on this battlefield.
BONUS is very similar to the German SMArt 155 system; SMArt 155 descends on a parachute rather than a system of winglets and uses a millimeter radar as an altimeter instead of LIDAR.
The United States developed the similar M898 SADARM system (which also descended on a ballute to attack the top surfaces of armored vehicles), but this was discontinued in favor of the GPS-guided M982 Excalibur round. US artillery largely deploys the M712 Copperhead laser-guided round for the anti-tank role.
Defense News March 2023
