Weapons of Russian Snipers Seen During a Live Fire Exercise

[Zarvan]

While doing a research for another article I came across a set of photos taken during live firing exercises of Russian Ground Forces’ snipers in Alabino proving grounds. Reportedly, the images are taken in December 2017. Let’s take a look at them and discuss the most interesting aspects.

This soldier is probably just posing for the photo because it is hard to imagine a single soldier to be issued a KSVK, SVD, and AKM. And that’s a good habit to rest the stock on your foot if you don’t want all kind of nasty stuff to stick to the buttstock.

The large rifle shown in the images is a KSVK anti-materiel rifle. It is a .50 caliber bullpup bolt action riflechambered in 12.7x108mm. It is manufactured in V.A. Degtyarev Plant located in Kovrov, Russia. This riflehas a 1,000mm or one-meter long (39.4″) barrel and an overall length of 1,420mm (56″). It feeds from 5-round detachable box magazines. KSVK rifle weighs 12.5 kilograms (27 lbs 9 oz) with an attached empty magazine and without the scope.

PB pistol on the hip of the rearmost soldier.

I think it is probably not the best choice to use a full-size AK as a secondary weapon for the snipers and designated marksmen. I suspect if these guys are deployed, they’ll be issued something more compact like AKS-74U. The lack of any camouflage on the AKMs as opposed to the rest of the gear, makes me think that these AKMs are not a part of their standard gear but were issued for this particular exercise only.

One of the SVD rifles has a conventional SVD flash hider and the second one is equipped with a suppressor.

Two snipers working in pairs and practicing shooting through a window or a hole in the wall. You gotta be creative on the battlefield, too – note the improvised chairs. Note also the non-standard muzzle device on the rifle of the soldier on right.

A pretty common technique of hooking the sling over the front sight to keep it from hanging.

Perhaps no drills are complete without the good old PKM. Note also the Mechanix gloves.

If you have noticed anything interesting that I missed, let’s discuss it in the comments section.











http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/01/15/weapons-russian-snipers-seen-live-fire-exercise/