The Radom MSBS has been in development for a quite a few years, as the Polish military is going to replace their Tantal and Beryl 96 with a new system. The Polish military has never intended to purchase enough Beryl to replace all the Tantals in the system. Many reserve units are still slugging it out with cold war AKs.
We missed them last year at SHOT so we made a decision to visit them this year. First of all, they were aware of the Canadian market because we bought a bunch of BRS99 from them. Also, the reason they rented a 3 units floor space because they are eying the US commercial market. They spent most of their floor space to show case their Beryl 96 system, including the one that has been modified to take AR magazines. Since Radon has a history of marketing civilian legal semi-automatic versions of their military rifles, I won't be surprised if they are gauging interest to see if they can market the "Archer" ( the civilian version of Bery ) to the US.
We had a chat with this friendly ex-infantry Polish Engineer behind the counter. His English was not too good so we could not ask any technical questions. The impression we got was that the Radom was pretty eager to send the MSBS to the US market. While he stated that the company was hoping to make the civilian version available by the end of this year, I am not sure that is feasible since they don't have a factory in the US. Whatever the plan for the civilian is, the Polish Military is supposed to make a decision as to the configuration they want this year ( conventional or bullpup) and hopefully they will start making purchase. The plan is to send the MSBS to the special forces and operational units first.
My impression with the conventional MSBS's ergonomic is pretty positive. It is obvious the people who are providing design feedback to the factory are watching a lot of magpul videos couple years ago and paying attention to the Masada in a positive way. Also, many of special forces units in polish military operate M16 FOW and then HK416, so there is an incentive to replicate the ergonomic. If that is the basis of the design, it is pretty much inevitable the end product will look like the ACR/Masada. The best way to sum this up, it handles like a lighter and more ergonomic variant of a Bushmaster ACR, with a simple bolt and nut arrangement instead of the extra baggage of unwanted complicated QD barrel mechanism.
The Grenade launcher is also an interesting piece. While HK and Colt Canada are going with double action trigger for safety reason, Radon is staying with single action like the old M203. Instead of putting the safety inside the trigger guard, it has a simple lever over the trigger. The push button in front of the trigger is the breech open button.
We missed them last year at SHOT so we made a decision to visit them this year. First of all, they were aware of the Canadian market because we bought a bunch of BRS99 from them. Also, the reason they rented a 3 units floor space because they are eying the US commercial market. They spent most of their floor space to show case their Beryl 96 system, including the one that has been modified to take AR magazines. Since Radon has a history of marketing civilian legal semi-automatic versions of their military rifles, I won't be surprised if they are gauging interest to see if they can market the "Archer" ( the civilian version of Bery ) to the US.
We had a chat with this friendly ex-infantry Polish Engineer behind the counter. His English was not too good so we could not ask any technical questions. The impression we got was that the Radom was pretty eager to send the MSBS to the US market. While he stated that the company was hoping to make the civilian version available by the end of this year, I am not sure that is feasible since they don't have a factory in the US. Whatever the plan for the civilian is, the Polish Military is supposed to make a decision as to the configuration they want this year ( conventional or bullpup) and hopefully they will start making purchase. The plan is to send the MSBS to the special forces and operational units first.
My impression with the conventional MSBS's ergonomic is pretty positive. It is obvious the people who are providing design feedback to the factory are watching a lot of magpul videos couple years ago and paying attention to the Masada in a positive way. Also, many of special forces units in polish military operate M16 FOW and then HK416, so there is an incentive to replicate the ergonomic. If that is the basis of the design, it is pretty much inevitable the end product will look like the ACR/Masada. The best way to sum this up, it handles like a lighter and more ergonomic variant of a Bushmaster ACR, with a simple bolt and nut arrangement instead of the extra baggage of unwanted complicated QD barrel mechanism.
The Grenade launcher is also an interesting piece. While HK and Colt Canada are going with double action trigger for safety reason, Radon is staying with single action like the old M203. Instead of putting the safety inside the trigger guard, it has a simple lever over the trigger. The push button in front of the trigger is the breech open button.
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