ARWEN 37
Police Ordnance Company Inc. purchased ARWEN® including the ARWEN® Trade Mark, ARWEN® Patents and all remaining ARWEN® inventory from Royal Ordnance (Weapons and Munitions) Ltd. in the spring of 2001. We now manufacture the ARWEN® Mark III Less Lethal Weapons in Canada. We have also enhanced the Less Lethal Munitions available for the ARWEN® Less Lethal System to 100 variants. The ARWEN family features weapons such as: ARWEN 37 is a "sub-family" of the ARWEN weapons system. It features 4 DIFFERENT LAUNCHERS: The STANDARD launcher equipped with full size barrel and butt stock; The TACTICAL version: Features the butt stock but has a shorter barrel; The COMPACT version: Has the short barrel of the TACTICAL version and doesn't feature the butt stock anymore. All of those fire the 37mm grenades, either standard or 37mm-ARWEN proprietary low cost less-than-lethal, and are fed by a 6-round rotating drum magazine. All of them function in semi-auto firing mode. Those launchers are in service with many police forces across Europe, and some armies are reported to use it in riot control operations during peace-keeping or peace-enforcing missions. As far as I know, the STANDARD version is also license-made in Canada by POLICE ORDNANCE COMPANY. At present time, many countries in which police and army use the ARWEN series are BLAMING this weapons, and phasing them out, as those (and THE CARTRIDGE, often) have proven to be VERY DANGEROUS for the users AND for people against which those are used. Those guns are blamed to have often malfunctions, which can result in accidents for the users, OR in undesired lethal effects against crowds. Furthermore, after the tragic troubles occurred in Genoa (Italy) last July, during the G8 conference, police officers and many of the protesters reported to have been BURNT by CS gas.
Picture and information courtesy of: ARWEN® Less Lethal System
