FB MSBS Grot


The FB MSBS Grot is a modular assault rifle developed and manufactured by FB "Łucznik" Radom.
The Grot name has been added to the MSBS after the official adoption of the rifle by the Polish Armed Forces.
There are two basic configurations of the rifle that is based on a common upper receiver; a conventional layout and a bullpup layout. With its variety of modules, both configurations can be easily configured into an assault rifle, carbine, designated marksman rifle, or squad automatic weapon. The rifle can also be chambered in 7.62×39mm cartridge.

History

The current service rifle of the Polish Armed Forces is the kbs wz. 96 Beryl, developed from the kbk AKM. However, despite various upgrades, the Beryl is now considered both outdated by modern standards and impossible to improve further. Because of that, work on a completely new family of assault rifles was started in Poland.
The rifle has been in development since 2007 by the WAT in Warsaw in cooperation with the arms manufacturer FB Radom. The weapon is said to be operating on completely distinct internal mechanics. No further information has been disclosed however. The external design was conceived by a separate team working alongside mechanical engineers.
At SHOT Show 2015, representatives of Łucznik said that in 2015 they planned to open a factory in Texas and make the MSBS available to US customers, possibly as early as December 2015. This, however, never materialized, and the US branch of Łucznik was dissolved in 2017.
One of the major advantages of a modular weapon system is the simplified logistics, because of the interchangeable parts between different weapon types, so fewer different parts need to be stored. If necessary, a soldier can sacrifice, for example, one standard assault rifle to repair a light machine gun. Another benefit may include ease of barrel changeability, as found on the Steyr AUG. This means a soldier may be able to adapt their rifle based on the environment they are in, such as converting a carbine to a designated marksman rifle, to be able to engage targets at a greater range, if the situation requires it. The benefits of this feature allow a squad to have fewer unique weapons.
In February 2018, the 42nd Light Infantry Battalion of the Territorial Defence Force became the first unit issued the rifle.

Variants

The following variants were designed based on the requests from the Polish Armed Forces to replace currently used firearms such as the AKM, FB Beryl, FB Mini-Beryl, and Pallad grenade launcher.
The MSBS GROT is a selective fire modular assault rifle which is capable of semi-automatic, 3-round burst and fully automatic fire. It has a cyclic rate of fire of around 700–900 rounds per minute.
Both the Classic and Bullpup variants are offered in 5 different configurations and have many common interchangeable parts and can be converted from one to the other.:
Since the Polish Military of Defence ordered 53,000 of the MSBS assault rifles, Fabryka Broni has introduced a military naming designation for the MSBS series.
Grot – After the official adoption of the rifle by the Polish Armed Forces, the Grot name was added.
C, B, R – variants, classic, bullpup, or representative.
10, 16, 20 – barrel lengths, in inches.
G, M, PS – configurations, assault rifle with grenade launcher, light machine gun, marksman rifle
FB – Fabryka Broni, the manufacturer of this weapon system.
M – number of series
In this case, MSBS Grot C 16 FB-M1 means assault rifle in classic variant from first series manufactured by Fabryka Broni. The name Grot means arrowhead in Polish and refers to general Stefan Rowecki's pseudonym.

MSBS-762N derivative

The MSBS-7.62N is a semi-automatic sniper rifle/designated marksman rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge.
The MSBS-762N project began in the end of 2015 when Polish Military of Defence announced analytical works for the replacement program of their SVD Dragunov sniper rifle and supplement the bolt-action TRG-22 and Tor sniper rifles currently in service. It was led by the team of Fabryka Broni Łucznik-Radom and Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna engineers.
The MSBS-762N has two different configurations; one with a 508 mm barrel with a fixed adjustable stock and the other with 406 mm barrel with the MSBS Grot C's adjustable side-folding stock. Both configurations are part of the MSBS family and some of the parts of the rifle, such as the stock, handguard, pistol grip, and trigger are interchangeable between 5.56m and 7.62m models.
The MSBS-762N is designed as a semi-automatic rifle but project engineers declared that a fully automatic configuration can be developed if required.
In September, 2019 the MSBS-762N was officially announced at MSPO 2019.

Users

Current users