MSPO 2019 – was it better already?
Narev program proposal, a CAMM missile launcher based in Jelcha. The CAMM rocket mock-up is visible from the front. On the left is a 35-mm gun AG-35 of the Notech system.
The International Defense Industry Exhibition has been an exhibition event for many years, which becomes more and more impressive every year. Both in terms of the number of participants and their position on the market, as well as the range of products presented in Kielce. MSPO has become the third - after the Paris Eurosatory and the London DSEI - the most important European salon of "western" land weapons. MSPO managed to get the status of a regional event, and not just an all-Russian one. At the XXVII INPO, which took place September 3-6, all these achievements were more like a memory.
The review gets better as time goes on, so if you have to point to a Salon that turned negative from a positive trend, it would be last year's MSPO. The list of foreign exhibitors is getting shorter and shorter, and the Polish industry, including Capital Group Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa SA (GK PGZ), is unable to fill this gap with their offer. There are several reasons for this. First, the Department of Defense purchases almost exclusively American weapons, without tenders and without any justification: economic, technical, operational and industrial. It's hard to advertise your offer because you already know it will be omitted in a way that is, euphemistically speaking, an insult. And the annual exhibition calendar, limited only to Europe, is very tight. On the other hand, when it comes to the Polish defense industry, with the exception of a few private companies that are successful in the market and therefore have money for development, the situation is not rosy. This problem concerns mainly the PGZ group. Without prudent long-term investment and procurement policies leading to an influx of new technology, there will be no new products. But this is not there, it should be enough - with rare exceptions - simple shopping with the so-called. shelves.
The following report from the XNUMXth MSPO omits some of the topics and products that we present in separate articles in this and the next edition of Wojska i Techniki.
Main theme
Usually this can be indicated on the basis of the priorities of the modernization of the Polish Armed Forces and the exhibition activity of domestic and foreign exhibitors that correlates with them. This year, we can say that it was the PK self-propelled tracked missile tank destroyer program. Ottokar birch. Foreign journalists who did not belong to the Slavic language group heard and understood only Otokar, so they were interested in the share of the Turkish company Otokar in the program ... Czech, Ottokar Brzezina, who, after serving in the Austro-Hungarian army, became a Polish artillery officer, which also does not mean that companies from the Czech Republic participate in the program). Let's add right away that the presence of the Turkish military-industrial complex was de facto limited to Turkish Aerospace Industries. This is how the restrained and irresistible charm of Polish diplomacy works.
So we had a rash of jet tank destroyers at the PGZ exhibition, with two exceptions. The proposals presented by the Group were rather a signal of available solutions, since these partial mock-ups can hardly even be called demonstrational. The logic of these machines was clear - such a chassis could be offered by PGZ, and the proposed anti-tank guided missile should preferably be Brimstone from MBDA UK. It is impossible to argue with the last postulate, currently Brimstone offers the largest number of Western ATGMs on the market - mainly in a combination of range-speed-efficiency-homing (more on WiT 8/2018). On the other hand, there are more doubts about the carriers, which were: BWP-1 (Wojskowe Zakłady Motoryzacyjne SA), UMPG (Research and Development Center for Mechanical Devices "OBRUM" Sp. Z oo) and licensed chassis for "Crab". (Huta Stalowa Wola SA together with ARE). Interestingly, the latter did not have Brimstone mock-ups and came with an original design of a rotating launcher with mock-ups of four ATGMs in transport-launch containers in one part and mock-ups of three missiles (most reminiscent of short-range anti-missile missiles). aircraft structure) on rail guides in another. As conceived by the creators, this was to show the possibility of integrating any long-range anti-tank guided missile, provided that its length does not exceed 1800-2000 mm. One thing is certain, given the mass and dimensions of the carrier, one could expect a “battery” of at least 24 Brimstones. The advantage of BWP-1 as a carrier is that it is available in abundance and outdated in its primary role, so why not use it that way? But it is precisely this hopelessness (wear and tear, inconsistency in the characteristics of the rest of the armored vehicles) that is its biggest drawback. The UMPG is not needed by the Polish Army, so it was probably used mainly because of its availability. One thing must be admitted, even after many years, the UMPG has retained a slender (small purpose) and modern silhouette. Both BVP-1 and UMPG had launchers of the same design, a huge "box" with a certain elevation range and two rows (2 × 6) of missiles. The creation of the Ottokar Brzoza target would require sufficient funding to be tempted by the launcher, inscribed in the outline of the hull, to reduce its size and disguise the purpose of the vehicle in the stowed position (like the Russian 9P162 and 9P157). The natural candidate for such a vehicle - if it is to be a tracked vehicle (more on that later) - seems to be the Borsuk IFV, but above all it must be available in greater numbers and above all it must be procured by the Ministry national defense in the basic version of the BMP.
You can also ask about the meaning of such a tank destroyer on tracks. Apparently following the same intuition, AMZ Kutno deployed a variant of the Bóbr 3 reconnaissance vehicle, now called the Wheeled Tank Destroyer, which, instead of the Kongsberg Protector remote control post with which the Bóbr 3 was introduced in Kielce, now had a remote-controlled launcher a year ago installation (dummy) with four ATGMs of an unspecified type, but launched from sealed transport-launch containers (appearance and dimensions suggest Spike LR / ER or MMP ATGMs). For a vehicle with a length of 6,9 m and a mass of ~14 tons, only four ATGMs ready for firing (and the lack of the possibility of automated reloading from under the armor) is somehow not enough. For comparison, the Russian launcher 9P163-3 of the Korniet-D complex on the Tigr-M armored car has eight ready-to-use 9M133M-2 ATGMs and eight spare ones that are reloaded inside the vehicle.
Although not quite in this category, but also with some anti-tank capabilities, the well-known land robot of this company was presented at the Rheinmetall stand, i.e. Mission Master, armed with a "battery" of six Warmate TL (Tube Launch) tubular launch canisters from the WB Group, also from the so-called. circulating ammunition in the version with a cumulative warhead. Nevertheless, there were more novelties in the field of anti-tank weapons in Kielce.
Interestingly, Raytheon representatives said that they are still working on a new version of the TOW ATGM, with a thermal imaging homing system (TOW Fire & Forget). Initially, such a program operated from 2000 to 2002, after which the Pentagon stopped it. However, Raytheon wants to offer such a missile to Poland as part of the Karabela program.
