According to news website Tut.by, a Belarusian company called BSVT has developed a new handheld grenade launcher. It is based on Russian Baryshev experimental grenade launcher and features some improvements over the latter. Particularly, the use of polymer and titanium parts allowed the designers to decrease the overall weight by 20%, down to 8 kilograms (about 17.5 lbs). The launcher will probably be adopted by the Belarusian special forces units.

All images are by www.tut.by and www.BSVT.by

The most significant achievement of the designers is perhaps the possibility to shoot the launcher full-auto off-hand. It is possible due to some sort of special bolt design which significantly decreases the felt recoil. According to the designers, the recoil feels like that of a 12 gauge shotgun. Considering that the launcher shoots 30x29mm VOG-17 grenades (and other types of grenades of AGS-17 and AGS-30 automatic grenade launchers), they must have done a pretty good job in recoil mitigation department. The launcher feeds either from a 29 round belt or from magazines of 3 or 6 round capacity.

As you can see in the above image, this grenade launcher is close in dimensions to the Pecheneg machine gun … it is even shorter. I think it kind of fills the gap between the mounted grenade launchers and handheld multiple shot launchers. It is capable of converting to the roles of both. It can be used as a great suppressive weapon when shot from the bipod with bursts and fed from the belt. And, if the situation requires so, it can quickly convert to a hand held weapon feeding from magazines and being relatively compact and maneuverable.