An abandoned weapons factory that still contains ammunition and military vehicles

Old arms factories are a magnet for urban explorers, but it is not common to find military equipment in them.

A long underground canal and a strange military vehicle graveyard in Belgium
A graveyard of British tanks and armoured personnel carriers in the island of Cyprus

Yesterday, Exploring the Unbeaten Path, one of the most popular YouTube channels about urban exploration, released a video in which two explorers venture into an abandoned underground weapons factory. The channel doesn't specify its location or even the country, although judging from the footage, it's easy to deduce that it's Slovakia.

What is unusual about this abandoned factory is that inside there is still a large quantity of ammunition, both artillery shells and small-caliber cartridges, and even military vehicles, specifically chassis of self-propelled howitzers:

The video is very interesting not only for the findings, but also for the complexity of the entry. I've seen many videos about urban exploration, and this has been one of the most spectacular entries I've seen. You can see some screenshots here as a preview. Below these lines we see 152mm artillery shells. If I'm not mistaken, these are Model-OF separate-charge ammunition, designed for the Czechoslovakian ShKH vz. 77 DANA self-propelled howitzer and also used by the Soviet D-20 towed howitzers. These shells were loaded into the guns first, with a propellant charge bag.

Another spectacular find: a pile of artillery rockets, apparently 9m22 Grad 122mm, a Soviet model used by the RM-70 rocket launchers of the former Czechoslovakia, an artillery system still used by the Slovak Army.

There are several objects that allow us to identify when this factory was abandoned. In the video, we see a 1988 calendar and also this newspaper: it is "Práca," a communist publication edited in Bratislava by the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, the sole trade union of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship. The newspaper is dated November 18, 1985.

Explorers found several abandoned military vehicles with Slovak Army insignia. They are ShKH vz. 77 DANA (a model introduced in 1980 in the former communist dictatorship of Czechoslovakia) or perhaps its evolution, the SpGH Zuzana, introduced in 1998. Both have 152 mm caliber howitzers and are based on the chassis of the 8x8 Tatra 815 truck.