The Bushmaster is the pinnacle of Aussie military engineering might - and it’s keeping countless Ukrainian troops safe as Russia’s brutal invasion rages on.Ian Langford, a former officer in the Australian army with over 30 years of service, said the Bendigo-built four wheel drive’s unique design, four-tonne payload, speed and versatility have made it a must-have for militaries the world over - and the nation should be proud of it.The vehicle’s V-shaped hull made it particularly useful protecting troops against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and has been the mainstay for Aussie soldiers since the early 2000s. “The Bushmaster has a storied history of service in the Australian army in recent campaigns to include Iraq and Afghanistan. Its survivability, its self-protection, its communication networks, and some of its lethality systems are what defines it,” the retired Brigadier told news.com.au.“It’s demonstrated its utility across different modalities of conflict from peacekeeping through to security operations in counterinsurgency, all the way through to medium and high-intensity conflict, such as that we’re seeing employed by Ukraine armed forces in that theatre right now. “So the Bushmaster has been and is readily acknowledged by the receiving forces in Ukraine as being very effective at providing protection, lethality and maneuver for their forces.”Mr Langford said the vehicle, which is built by defence contractor Thales Australia and carries up to 10 troops at a time, used a “modular system” that allows it to be both a mobile command-and-control hub for drone operations and a makeshift ambulance to ferry injured troops - capabilities he said are essential to fighting a numerically-superior army like Russia’s.“It’s got the ability to reconfigure its power settings so that it can generate enough power to be able to run headquarter operations, to be able to coordinate tactics and large scale maneuvers, and also to be able to employ autonomous systems,” he said.“[You can] plug in or dial in remotely-controlled and other autonomous systems that can be run from that vehicle to generate combat effects over and above the mass and scale that you have with an adversary such as Russia, which relies on mass and scale to be able to overwhelm some of the gaps it has in things like effective tactics and modern technology.”‘Plug a gap’Australia has provided Ukraine with 120 Bushmasters since the start of the conflict in 2022. They vehicles played a pivotal role in liberating parts of Kharkiv region that same year and were allegedly used in the partial capture of the Russian region of Kursk in August 2024.These world-renowned vehicles, which measure some seven metres long, are just one part of the $1.8bn in military aid Canberra has provided Kyiv in four years.The ADF also donated 56 M113AS4 armoured personnel carriers, 49 M1A1 Abrams tanks and countless, cheap flat-pack Corvo drones. This is on top of the millions of dollars worth munitions, artillery and counter-drones systems that have already been provided.But it’s the provision of 130 Bushmasters that Ukrainian troops have been raving about. Mr Langford, who also served with Australian special forces for 25 years, said though versatile, Bushmaster were not an armoured vehicle and shouldn’t be exposed to direct enemy fire.“They are very good at providing protected mobility from the back of the forward battle area into rear echelons, so you can rapidly move troops that might replace wounded or fatigued units on the line or be able to reposition based on an operational advantage or some sort of contingency.“For example, if troops lose ground or have got to plug a gap, they can move lots of people very quickly in a protected way. That protection includes keeping people safe from things like artillery fire, drone strikes - the kinds of hazards that, if they’re in a soft-skinned or an unprotected vehicle, would either render that vehicle damaged or destroyed, or would severely expose those inside it to some of those risks that they would be protected from if they’re in a Bushmaster.”The Bushmaster has also become a target of Russia’s propaganda war.In March 2025, a video went viral of Russian troops thanking Australia after capturing an “abandoned” Bushmaster during fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. The video was reposted by Russia’s foreign ministry as well as the Russian embassy in Canberra on social media.A year earlier, a destroyed Bushmaster was captured by Russian troops and put on display in central Moscow as part of the Kremlin’s Western war trophies, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Another was pictured destroyed on the side of a road in Russia after being used by Ukraine in the partial sacking of Kursk.There have also been countless clips circulating online of blown-out Bushmasters in Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine. It’s not clear how many Bushmasters have been destroyed since 2022 but Mr Langford believes the number to be low.“I would expect the majority of those vehicles to be effective and in service today, providing the kind of mobility and maneuver that Ukraine needs to move large numbers of troops across a very vast area like the frontline, in ways that keep people protected and get them as far forward as you can without exposing them to risk unnecessarily.”‘We should be proud’Mr Langford said another “under-appreciated” element of Australianb military aid to Kyiv is the training we’re providing Ukrainian troops in the UK and in places like Poland.“Those tactics, techniques, and procedures that our troops are able to impart to Ukrainian forces, but also frankly, what we can learn from them based on their recent combat experiences, is really profound because that’s the kind of tradecraft that you need to live, fight, and survive in those contested environments where you’ve got high attrition rates in terms of fatigue, injury and death.“So you’ve got to be able to train people to operate, you’ve got to train them to be effective, and you’ve got to train them to survive.”But it’s the Bushmaster that Aussies should be particularly proud of, Mr Langford suggested.“It’s not invincible. If you use it incorrectly, you do put people at risk. But for what it’s intended for and how it is performed, it’s been impressive. It’s been a standout. “It’s highly valued by countries. So many of the Pacific Island nations, countries like the Netherlands, they’ve bought these vehicles based on their operational performance and their reputation. So people should be proud of it in that respect,” he said.“It’s also a great story of a platform and a system that’s synonymous with Australia’s military operations this century… Since the wars of the 2000s, the Bushmaster is synonymous with the Anzac myth as is the light horsemen of World War One.”Bushmasters are described by Thames Group as a “combat proven multi-role protected vehicle” and weigh 15 tonnes.It’s designed to protect up to 10 occupants from a “high level” of blast and ballistic protection with excellent off-road mobility. The first Bushmasters, built in Bendigo, entered service in 2005.With a top speed of 110 km/h, a test drive review from Drive magazine writer Tony Davis described the vehicles off-road ability.“We are heading for what is known, with appropriate irony, as the ‘kindy circuit’. This tight collection of near vertical hills, spirelike crests, muddy ditches and water crossings would be hard work in most serious 4WDs. The Bushmaster just eats it up,” he wrote.The price tag of the Bushmaster per unit has not been officially released and estimated costs vary from $500,000 and $2.5 million with Australia in possession of about 1000.