Modular Weapon
System
T
he MWS-15 is a little broth-
er of earlier .308 MWS-25
and .338 MWS-38 semi-au-
tomatic battle rifles/DMR rifles
developed by the engineers from
Zakłady Mechaniczne Tarnów
(Tarnów Metalworks, ZM Tarnów
or ZMT in short) defense industry
company from Poland, known ear-
lier from their proprietary bull-pup
sniper rifles.
S
ome historical background
first. The SKW (it was the
initial name for the rifles)
program has its roots somewhere
in 2010-2011 when the OBR SM
(since 2012 part of ZM Tarnów
aka ZMT) launched the .338 Lapua
Magnum bull-pup semi-automatic
sniper rifle. The prototype of the ri-
fle was unveiled during the MSPO
2012 defense show. The bull-pup
design was somehow a trademark
of ZMT sniper rifles – TOR and BOR
sniper rifles which were adopted by
Polish Armed Forces are bull-pups.
The bull-pup project was finally
abandoned and the ZMT engineers
decided to take another route, the
more classic AR-15 layout which
is now regarded as an industry
standard. The SKW project was
taken over by Roman Uznanski.
It was 100% internally funded but
in the meantime Polish MOD de-
cided to launch a program to find
the replacement for old Dragunov
SVD semi-automatic sniper rifles
in 7.62x54R. The SKW was initially
a .338 chambered so it was decid-
ed to scale it down to .308. Due to
the potential military contract, the
smaller version took priority. It also
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FIREARMS
