Zaklady Mechaniczne Tarnow S.A.

Zaklady Mechaniczne Tarnow has been an industrial site since 1917 and an arms plant since the early 1950s, when it assembled 37 mm anti-aircraft cannon and the NR-37D aircraft gun for MiG-15 and MiG-17 fighters. Small arms came much later. The company joined Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa in 2015 and now sells across six catalogue lines, covering support weapon, air defence system, the anti-aircraft artillery rocket system, container systems, electronics components and services, with its own research and development centre handling electronics, software and complete armament systems rather than buying them in.

The support weapon line is the one foreign customers know. It runs from the WKM-B 12.7 mm heavy machine gun introduced in 1999 and its WKM-Bm naval pillar mount, through the modernised UKM-2000P general purpose machine gun, to the WKW Tor 12.7 mm anti-materiel rifle and the 7.62 mm BOR sniper rifle, of which more than a thousand have reached the Polish Armed Forces. Grenade launchers include the wz. 1974 Pallad underslung 40 mm design produced in about 6,800 units, the standalone wz. 1983 Pallad-D, and the RGP-40 revolver launcher. Mortars are 60 mm and there are three of them: the LM-60D, the lighter LM-60K commando version with its composite-barrel LM-60KC derivative, and the newer LMP-2017.

Air defence is the older business and still the heavier one. Tarnow built the 23 mm ZU-23-2 for two decades, mounted it on a truck bed as the Hibneryt, navalised it as the ZU-23-2MR Wrobel II, added missiles as the ZUR-23-2S Jod, and now sells the ZUR-23-2KG set pairing twin cannon with GROM or PIORUN missiles on a light 4x4. The ZSU-23-4MP Biala self-propelled system and the PSR-A Pilica anti-aircraft artillery rocket system, supplied as firing unit, artillery tractor and command post, extend the same line upward. Remote controlled weapon stations, developed from 2004 as the ZSMU modules, are fitted to Polish vehicles including the Rosomak wheeled carrier. Container systems and electronics components are the quieter half of the catalogue, the first covering a light observation and protection container plus a 40-foot mobile shooting range for units without a permanent range, the second supplying rugged military computers and operator monitors including shielded variants, power management modules, manipulators for remote weapon control and electric drive systems using permanent magnet synchronous motors. Services are sold as capacity to outside customers, spanning electroplating, heat and thermochemical treatment, machining, plastic working, welded structures, laser, water jet and electrical discharge cutting, and laboratory research. Mobile training centres go to units without a range of their own. Older Tarnow designs still turn up in inventories across the region, among them the PKMZ-2 14.5 mm anti-aircraft system built through the 1960s in about 1,240 examples, the AWGL-3 automatic tear gas launcher of 1982, the Brucyt sub-calibre inserts used for tank gunnery training, and the NSWO Utios 12.7 mm machine gun of 1988.