So Atlantic Firearms just brought these in. Drink in this Hungarian beauty made by the same folks that made the old PJK-9 Hi-Power clone, which, in my opinion, was the best P35 clone ever produced.
I give you, the Hungarian Dragunov-18 Rifle:
Imported by B&T USA, they run a PSzO-1M2 4x optic, have the classic SVD-style wood furniture that looks to be oak (or, possibly Hungarian Black locust?), and come with lots of goodies.
The bad news is that Atlantic is selling these for $7,500 which is astronomical, especially as these are new production guns and not surplus martial pieces that never passed a military inspector’s eye. Still, the market will probably bear it as Russian-made commercial Izhmash Tigers from the early 2000s run $7-8K with collectors and even Chinese Norinco NDM-86s from the 1980s are pushing into the $10K region.
The Russian Ministry of Defense last week released footage from testing of their next-gen long range rifle, right out of the freezer.
The T-5000 “Tochnost” (Russian for roughly “accuracy” or “precision”) has been testing recently at the Klimovsk’s Central Scientific Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering, (the Russians really like long names) near Moscow. In the above video– don’t freak out, it is in Russian– the rifle is shown first in some sedate testing by a chill guy we’ll just call Dimitri in the prone position. He even has a shooting mat.
This all changes.
Then they toss it in the freezer at -50 C (-122 F) and leave it there to die like it’s James Bond or something. Dimitri then comes back and pulls the rifle out (we know what you are thinking: how much time passed, right?) and hit the range again, sans optics, which may not be able to take the chill.
It seems legit, as the gun ices up when it hits the air and good old Dimitri looks pretty hesitant to wrap his body around the chilly long-range rifle, but who knows. Cut to scene of Dimitri shooting the rifle in a rain booth. Poor guy, apparently all the hacking jobs were taken.
The .338 Lapua Magnum rifle is based on the Orsis T-5000, which was introduced in 7.62x51mm and .300 Win back in 2011 by TsNIITochMash for international sales. The larger Tochnost is to be used by Russian special forces “as well as for anti-terrorist and security activities,” as noted by Alexei Schyokin with the agency.
But how does it compare to the classic 7.62x54R Dragunov SVD?
Whereas the old school Dragunov, which was more of a designated marksman’s rifle anyway, could sometimes tap in at 2 MOA at 100m, the Tochnost is billed at being accurate to 0.3-0.5 MOA. The Tochnost takes a number of cues from standard Western precision rifles, for instance, it is bolt-action, has a heavy barrel on an aluminum bedding block, is CNC machined to a tolerance of less than 0.0025mm, and its chassis resembles everything from Ruger’s latest offering to the Austrian Ritter and Stark SLX-1 to the Israeli DAN .338.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Tochnost is expected to be fielded by 2020 as a dedicated sniper tool, with the current SV-98 rifles and updated SVDM/SVDS still used as DMRs– the Dragunov’s old role.
Of course, the whole thing could be vaporware as the Russians have come out with a half-dozen or more foggy sniper rifles in past years including the weird ass OTs-03 SVU bullpup 7.62x54R, the Degtyarev KSVK anti-material rifle, OSV-96, VKS (in very curious 12.7x55mm silenced), VSK-94 and VSS Vintorez (both in 9x39mm SP5/6), Lobaev SVL, SV99 (in .22LR) and Kalashnikov SVK.
And of course, there seems no shortage of SVDs popping up in the hands of local pro-Russian militias fighting for greater Putinland in places formerly Soviet.
A fighter with the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Army stands guard at a checkpoint along a road from the town of Vuhlehirsk to Debaltseve in Ukraine, in this file photo taken on February 18, 2015. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
Sureshot Armament Group is updating Dragunov SVD clones (such as the more affordable Tiger, Medved, Norinco NSG-85 and others) with a 21st Century chassis that includes a keymod forearm, Picatinny flattop and such goodies as a Magpul STR stock and BCM gunfighter grip for a very Costa-like 7.62x54mmR semi-auto.
The Mechanix of Auto, Aviation, Military...pert near anything I feel relates to mechanical things, places, events or whatever I happen to like. Even non-mechanical artsy-fartsy stuff.
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