Poland unveils its new heavy infantry fighting vehicle

Poland’s state-owned defense conglomerate PGZ unveiled its new heavy infantry fighting vehicle in full for the first time at MSPO 2026, the Kielce arms fair, after days of teasing only partial glimpses of the vehicle on social media.

The vehicle, known by its Polish designation CBWP, or Ciężki Bojowy Wóz Piechoty, was developed by Huta Stalowa Wola, a PGZ subsidiary that builds much of Poland’s tracked armored equipment. PGZ described the vehicle as combining a high level of crew protection, strong mobility and firepower delivered through the ZSSW-30 remote-controlled turret.

The ZSSW-30 is already in Polish service, mounted on the Rosomak wheeled armored personnel carrier and the lighter, amphibious Borsuk infantry fighting vehicle. Developed by Huta Stalowa Wola together with Polish electronics firm WB Group, the turret carries a 30mm Bushmaster automatic cannon, a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun and twin launchers for Spike-LR anti-tank guided missiles, and is built around a hunter-killer targeting concept that lets the vehicle commander search for new threats while the gunner engages one already found.

PGZ and Huta Stalowa Wola signed a framework agreement with Poland’s Armament Agency in August 2023 covering the supply of several hundred heavy infantry fighting vehicles in various configurations, along with a logistics and training package. Under that agreement, the vehicle’s chassis draws on the design used for Poland’s Krab self-propelled howitzer. The vehicle is intended to carry a three-person crew and eight dismounted soldiers, engaging armored and unarmored targets, exposed weapon positions and field fortifications while providing fire support to infantry in direct contact with the enemy, in any weather, day or night.

Huta Stalowa Wola previously showed a model of the vehicle, under the name Ratel, at MSPO 2025. That version was described as a roughly 40-tonne design fitted with the Obra-3 laser warning and protection system, a nuclear, biological and chemical protection suite, and the option to add an active protection system, with room for six to eight dismounted troops behind a two-person crew. Poland has said it is targeting a running prototype of the new chassis by the end of 2026, to be followed by qualification trials, ballistic testing, mine-resistance evaluation and formal assessment against the military’s requirements.

The vehicle’s front armor is believed to be designed to resist 30x173mm armor-piercing cannon rounds fired from 500 meters, a protection level consistent with STANAG 4569 Level 6, and its hull design reportedly leaves room to add explosive reactive armor, including Poland’s own modular Pangolin system, for additional protection against anti-tank warheads.

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