BEHIND THE SCENES - Tulip Flames: The 2S4 Tyulpan - A Tribute to Cold War Engineering
The Beast of the Battlefield: Why the 2S4 Tyulpan Matters In the shadowed corridors of Cold War history, the 2S4 Tyulpan stands as a paradox—a weapon of brutal efficiency wrapped in the poetic nickname “Tulip.” Designed in the 1970s as a response to NATO’s fortified bunkers, this self-propelled mortar was engineered to obliterate hardened targets with 240mm shells capable of piercing 12 meters of concrete. Unlike its contemporaries, the Tyulpan didn’t just bombard; it excavated. Nicknamed the “Bunker Buster” by Soviet troops, it became the scalpel in the USSR’s arsenal, carving through obstacles that lesser weapons merely scratched. For military enthusiasts, the Tyulpan represents a watershed moment in artillery design. Its hybrid chassis—a marriage of a GMZ mine-laying vehicle and a turret housing the colossal mortar—allowed it to fire, reposition, and vanish before counter-battery radars could lock on. “It wasn’t just a weapon,” says Yestin Fun, NifeliZ’s lead designer. “It was a che...