On 29 August 2026, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, visited Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) at Wah.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the CDF “witnessed the tests and trials of locally designed and manufactured arms and ammunition.”
Among the items POF put on display was an assault rifle that it had not shown publicly before. Quwa noted at the time that the CDF’s review spanned POF projects ranging “from a new gas-operated assault rifle to new quadcopter-compatible drop munitions.”
The likeliest identity of that rifle is the “Gas Op Rifle” listed in the Ministry of Defence Production (MoDP) Yearbook 2022-2024. Under POF’s “New Initiatives,” the Yearbook places the Gas Op Rifle and a “CW-56 Rifle” under development, both with 2027 target dates, while listing a “BW-20 Rifle” and a “CW-39 Rifle” under trials with 2025 dates.
Therefore, the new rifle is one of at least four in-house POF designs currently in the pipeline. It follows the BW20 and BW21, which POF revealed in December 2021, and the PK18 and PK21 before them.
In addition, the ISPR reported that the CDF received “an overview of the progress on the corporatisation process following the enactment of the Defence Industrial Production and Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DIPRA) Ordinance,” and that POF is installing “two new industrial plants, which are likely to commence production by the end of current year.”
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