Polish "Neon" 5.56mm and 25mm / 40mm weapon
The “Neon”?
It looks like Poland is developing their own version of the XM29 OICW concept, according to the MSPO 2008 website. It may or may not be called the “Neon”, Google translate is not great at best of times.
What makes the Polish concept unique is that the grenade launcher part of the weapon will, at this stage in the design, be able to be removed and swapped for a different caliber, either 40mm or 25mm.
I am going to predict that they will end up with one caliber and not bother with the complexity and cost of multiple calibers.
It has the usual fire control system to program air burst grenades to detonate at a certain distance.
I will be watching with interest to see what happens with this program. Sweden and Singapore are also developing similar weapons and South Korea will be fielding the XK11 Korean New Rifle in 2010.
XK11 Korean New Rifle
More information here (translated with google)
I have done my best to find accurate information about this firearm on the Polish MSPO 2008 website. I do not speak or read Polish so I had to rely on Google Translate. If I got something wrong, please correct me in the comments.
I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
More by Steve Johnson
Comments
Join the conversation
@Tony
I found a short note about this in a military magazine "Nowa Technika Wojskowa" (= New Military Technology) - in short, the weapon is aparently still in early development, will be ready in circa 10 years (!) due to low funding, so all specs are subject of change, including caliber. But it's very unlikely that ZW Dezamet (name of manufacturer is a single solid fact in this program), which is also manufacturer of vide array of amunition, including 40 mm NATO HV/LV grenades of various type, will be using old russian design which they never produced themselves. In 6 pages of article about new rifles, only few sentences were about this design.
Sorry for crushing you hopes, last month it looked to me like something much more serious . On the bright side, sniper rifles and especialy MSBS, our new modular assualt rifle, looks promising and almost finished. They also look cool, much like SCAR family. It will be first 100% polish rifle design after 70 years and departure from using AK derivatives.
You should also know that polish military is currently overstretched in Afganistan and on very low budget. Polish minister of defence is pacifist (yes!!! he almost admited it himself on TV) and military is full of coruption. For example creator and first commander of Special Forces left Army - he couldn't stand the atmosphere. Did you know that in aircraft crashes, all during minister Klich's reign, we lost more generals than during all WW2? Never in last 60 years Army was that weak...
that's some space marine shit