First Five to be Completed by Year End
Visitors to MSPO 2018 in Kielce this week have been able to see at first hand the upgraded BWR-1 reconnaissance vehicle, presented by Polish industry.
In May 2017 Wojskowe Zakłady Motoryzacyjne (WZM) in Poznań (prime contractor, including new equipment) and Wojskowe Zakłady Łączności Nr 2 (WZŁ) in Czernica (new external communications equipment and assembly work) won a €16.8 million contract to upgrade five vehicles: two BWR-1S (the former Czechoslovak BPzV SVETAVA, of which Poland has 16 in service, procured in the early 1990s) and three BWR-1D (the Soviet BRM-1K, of which 22 remain in service, procured in 1987).
Both vehicles are equipped with an obsolete 2A28 GROM 73mm low-pressure smoothbore semi-automatic gun and PSNR-5K radars. The upgrades now being implemented for this first batch are expected to extend the vehicles’ useful service life by 10 years, until a new vehicle is inducted into the Polish Army.
Tests on two vehicles – one from each group – were successfully conducted between December 2017 and February 2018, with type testing undertaken over the following four months. Work on the remaining three vehicles is scheduled for completion by mid-December 2018. Meanwhile, the consortium has submitted a proposal to overhaul and upgrade the remaining 33 – work that is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.
The PSNR-5K radar has been replaced by the SR HAWK (V)2E Ku-Band Ground Surveillance Radar, which can simultaneously track up to 350 various targets. It can also identify the locations of artillery strikes. New passive sights have been fitted, and the vehicles ares also equipped with Safran JIM LR long-range thermal binoculars, HLD-S (BWR-1S) and 1D8 (BWR-1D) laser range-finders, and the NNP-21 (BWR-1S) night vision has been replaced by Etronika’s ZIG-T-2R thermal vision system, designed for observation and aiming by day and night as well as in fog and smoke: it includes a laser range-finder, a thermal camera and two TV cameras.
The vehicles are now also equipped with additional systems, including the MIMID mine detector, the AP4C automatic contamination detector and new radios. The old communication system has been replaced by a combination of Radmor RRC-9311 AP tactical VHF radios and Harris AN/PRC-150(C) FALCON II multiband tactical radio. The vehicle is also to be equipped with two FALCON III narrowband-compatible portable radios – AN/PRC-117G and AN/PRC-152A – and with INS/GPS navigation (GPS DAGR – Honeywell TALIN 5000). Another add-on is the SSP-1 OBRA-3 laser warning system, integrated with the 902A smoke grenade launchers. BWR-1D’s weight will increase from 13.3 to 14.2t, and the BWR-1S from 13.8 to 14.6.
