After a meeting with the President of Belarus, Roman Golovchenko, the chairman of the State Military Industrial Committee of the Republic of Belarus, gave an interview to a local news channel called Belarus 1 where he talked about the country’s plans concerning the upcoming developments in the military industry. Particularly, Golovchenko announced that they are planning to build a new small arms and ammunition plant.

Roman Golovchenko

The new plant will be built near the Orsha city of Vitebsk region. According to Golovchenko, the plant will first make ammunition then it will be expanded to assembling and later fully manufacturing modern small arms. Belarus plans not only to replace its aging small arms arsenal but also produce firearms for exporting. In fact, they claim that eventually, the main focus of the new plant will become the manufacturing of products dedicated to export. Golovchenko pointed out that Belarus-made military products offer a good price-performance ratio and the small arms produced in the country can also be competitive on the global arms market.

The hybrid AK/AR rifle earlier introduced in an exhibition held in Minsk

It is unclear if they will be manufacturing AKs and its variations which are the main small arms of the Armed Forces of Belarus or they will get into the AR business. The reason I speculate with this idea is that earlier one of the Belarusian companies has shown an AK magazine fed AR-15 pattern rifle. This tendency of making/adopting AR-15 rifles that are chambered in AK calibers and are fed from AK magazines is seen in many post-Soviet countries. For example, Ukraine has been testing a similar weapon – the WAC-47 rifle. Earlier, we’ve also reported about the possible export of the mentioned Belarusian AK/AR hybrid rifles to Azerbaijan.

Sources:

“Разговор у Президента”. Роман Головченко. (2018, November 12). Belarus 1. Retrieved from: https://www.tvr.by/videogallery/intervyu/razgovor-u-prezidenta/razgovor-u-prezidenta-roman-golovchenko/

Images from www.tvr.by, www.mil.by, www.tut.by

Hat tip to Matthew Moss