The Pallad (also known as the wz. 1974) is a 40 mm Polish underslung

grenade launcher A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially-designed large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke or gas warhead. Today, the term generally refers to a class of dedicated firearms firing unitary grenade cartridges. The m ...

, developed for use with the

AKM The AKM () is an assault rifle designed by Soviet small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1959. It is the most ubiquitous rifle of the Kalashnikov rifles. It was developed as a replacement to the AK-47 introduced a decade prior. Introduced ...

assault-rifle and intended to replace the

kbkg wz. 1960 The Karabinek-granatnik wzór 1960 (), also designated PMK-DGN-60Katz, Russel, and Volstad, ''Armies in Lebanon'' (1985), p. 44, Plate G1. or PMK-60,Rottman and Volstad, ''Warsaw Pact Ground Forces'' (1987), p. 53, Plate E1. is a Polish-made vers ...

grenade-launcher rifle. The name of the weapon reflects the

Polish-language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In additi ...

word for

palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself nam ...

. The development of the weapon drew on concepts provided by Józef Brodacki. The wz. 1983 Pallad D, the stand-alone version of the wz. 74, features a stock and AK type pistol grip. There are also variants compatible with 40x46mm NATO named GP-40 (40x46mm version of wz. 74 Pallad) and GS-40 (40x46mm version of wz. 83 Pallad-D).

Users

* – 10 (''5,56mm'' karabinek-granatnik wz. 1974) were given from Poland and in use by Lithuania before 2003 * – ''7,62mm'' karabinek-granatnik wz. 1974 (limited use), ''5,45mm'' karabinek-granatnik wz. 1974 (phased out), ''5,56mm'' karabinek-granatnik wz.1974 and wz. 83 Pallad-D are in use by

Polish Land Forces The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stre ...

References

40×47mm grenade launchers Grenade launchers of Poland Military equipment introduced in the 1970s {{Poland-mil-stub