Piorun

The shoulder-fired missile that became a star of the war in Ukraine — Poland's Piorun ("Thunderbolt") is a modernized, sharper-eyed descendant of the Soviet Igla that has knocked Russian jets, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones out of the sky, earned a stream of viral kill videos, and won orders from the US Army. A cheap, mobile, hard-to-suppress answer to the low-altitude air threat, it has become one of the most sought-after man-portable air-defence weapons in the world.

Overview

The Piorun (also designated GROM-M) is a Polish man-portable air-defence system (MANPADS) developed by MESKO, part of the state defence group PGZ. It is a single-shot, shoulder-launched short-range surface-to-air missile evolved from Poland's earlier GROM (itself a licensed development of the Soviet 9K38 Igla / SA-18). The Piorun's improvements are concentrated where they matter most against modern threats: a far more sensitive infrared seeker (reportedly several times more sensitive than GROM's), a combined proximity-and-impact fuze that can kill small targets even on a near-miss, and added features like a thermal sight rail and an authorization/IFF system. The result is a weapon able to engage not just aircraft and helicopters but the cruise missiles and drones that dominate the modern air threat — at low cost, from any soldier's shoulder, with no large signature for an enemy to find and destroy.

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