Instalaza

Instalaza is an infantry weapons house in Zaragoza that has been trading since 1943 and working on defence since 1951. It is small by prime standards, a little over 250 people across four sites in the city, and narrow on purpose. Almost everything it makes is meant to be carried by one soldier and fired from the shoulder. The catalogue divides into disposable weapon systems, reusable weapon systems, night vision, training systems, grenades, lethal packages and the propulsion systems that push all of it downrange.

The disposable family is the reason armies know the name. C90 is the base weapon, a 90mm single-shot launcher built in anti-armour, anti-bunker and dual purpose versions, and the C90-CR (M3.5) is the lightest system in its class. CS90 adds the ability to fire from inside a room without wrecking the crew, and CS90-ER stretches the range further. CS70 is the compact 70mm option for troops who cannot carry the bigger tube. ALCOTAN-100 (M2) sits at the top of the range, a 100mm weapon normally paired with a computerised fire control sight, and the company calls it its highest performing system. Reusable weapon systems are the smaller half of the business. HISPANO MPW is a multipurpose reusable launcher, and a reusable C90 keeps the same ammunition family in a tube that can be reloaded rather than discarded.

Optics and training fill in around the launchers. VN-IR is a long-wave thermal clip-on weighing under 750 grams, and an image intensified sight sits beside it for units that would rather run tubes than a microbolometer. Both clip on without alignment, take commercial lithium cells and fit the CS70 and C90 families. Selling the sights that way lets a customer add a night capability to launchers already in the armoury instead of buying new weapons, which is the sort of decision that keeps a small manufacturer on a procurement shortlist. Training systems let units run the drill on the real launcher rather than a substitute. Grenades are a separate line, with the ALHAMBRA D/O (M2) hand grenade in offensive and defensive forms and the FTV rifle grenade. Lethal packages and solid propulsion units, made for its own rockets and sold on their own, complete the range.

Instalaza carries a difficult piece of history. It built the MAT-120 cargo mortar bomb, a cluster munition that Spain gave up when it signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, and production stopped. The company argued at the time that its self-destruct mechanism met other protocols, then put the money into precision, confined-space firing and night fighting instead. Research and development takes between eight and twelve per cent of annual sales and the engineering department accounts for close to a third of the workforce. Commercial operations reach more than forty countries. In November 2022 the Zaragoza headquarters received one of the letter bombs sent to Spanish targets during the campaign that also hit Ukrainian diplomatic premises.