ORSIS T-5000 Rifle – Description, News and Rumors

[Zarvan]

T-5000 is a precision bolt action rifle developed by Russian company ORSIS. Earlier, we have briefly covered this gun. In this article, we’ll take a bit more in-depth look at the rifle. Also, recently some rumors were floating around this rifle and it has been spotted in different places all around the world. So I decided to combine all the information in one article. So let’s start with the description of the gun and see what’s interesting about it.

Description
T-5000 is a precision bolt action rifle. It has pretty much all the features that one can expect from a military-oriented weapon like this. It has a top Picatinny rail, adjustable cheek rest and butt pad, folding stock, built-in monopod and 3 position safety. The chassis of the gun is made of an aluminum alloy and the majority of other metal parts are stainless steel. All working parts like stock hinges are made of steel, too. There are also steel inserts in non-steel parts’ contacting points. So there is a steel on steel contact everywhere on the rifle.

The rifle comes chambered in one of the following calibers: .308 Win, .300 Win Mag, .260 Rem, 6.5x47mm Lapua and .338 Lapua Magnum. It feeds from a 5 round detachable box magazine. In the case of .308 Win and .260 Rem, there is also a 10 round magazine available. They also manufacture the barrels in-house using the cut rifling method which they really take pride in. They claim half MOA accuracy for the gun.

Although the rifle comes with 4 or 6 groove rifled barrels, it is possible to order a barrel with 5R rifling for all caliber options. It is also possible to order a custom twist rate within the twist rate limits recommended by the manufacturer. The T-5000 also comes with a Cerakote finish and several color options: black, gray, desert sand and OD green. The gun weighs from 12 lb 12.5 oz to 13 lb 10.7oz depending on the caliber.

The aluminum alloy used in the gun is called D16T (Д16Т) in Russian designation system, which US equivalent is 2024 aluminum. That is something different. We usually see 6061 or 7075 aluminum used in guns. Not being a metallurgist, it is hard to tell whether that alloy has any advantage or not … different doesn’t necessarily mean better, right? Here is a link to a comparison of 2024 and 7075 aluminum alloys.

So by doing a research on that alloy, I came across an interesting story concerning its creation. In 1946 Joseph Stalin ordered his engineers to make an exact copy of the aluminum alloy used in US Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft. Stalin literally signed an order where he said that the copy must be exactly identical to the US sample. That’s how the Russian D16 aluminum alloy was born. Now the D16T used in the rifle’s chassis seems to be the heat treated version of D16 and has much better properties.

Here is a video by ORSIS describing some of other features of the rifle and showing some manufacturing processes:

The gun is available for civilian purchase in Russia and has a starting price of 390,000 rubles, which is equal to about $6930 (as of April 2017).

IWA 2017 Scandal
During the IWA 2017, somebody approached the ORSIS booth and made a short video, which sparked some hot debates in Russian and European online communities. The guy actually filmed it when there was nobody from ORSIS officials. He speaks in Russian and tells with irony how good the rifle is at the same time showing that the rifle is so rudely made that it is almost impossible to work the action. Here is that video:

In response to this video, ORSIS representatives made their video answer, where a woman works the action of the same rifle and it works just fine.

Did they really brought a defective rifle to the show and then made their video with a fixed one? Or was that guy slandering? Some people immediately saw political reasons and started building conspiracy theories …but here in TFB we are about firearms, not politics. So it is hard to answer that questions, but that’s the IWA story with Orsis T-5000.

Possible Adoption by the Russian Military
Russian news agency Ria Novosti has published an interview (April 11) where the CEO of Russian arms company called TsNII TochMash said that in 2020 Russia will adopt a new precision rifle called “Tochnost” (Точность, means “precision”), which will be based on T-5000 rifle with a number of modifications to fit the military needs. The military also requires having no imported parts or materials used on the rifle and even no imported machinery and equipment used to manufacture the gun.

Earlier the rifle was tested during Russian “Ratnik” trials.

Spotted All Around The World
Earlier, Chinese military competition shooters have been seen using ORSIS T-5000. Here is an image from 2015:

However, about a month ago an image of Chinese soldiers standing in a formation has leaked into the internet, where one of the soldiers is holding a T-5000 rifle. Unfortunately, there is no information concerning whether they’ve adopted the rifle, at what scale etc. Here is that picture:

The rifle was also recently spotted in Iraq. In the following images, Australian instructors are introducing the rifle to Iraqi snipers. This is not the first time when these rifles are seen in Iraq, though.

The rifle was also recently spotted in the Ukrainian conflict in the hands of self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic soldiers:

Some time ago Vietnamese law enforcement officers were spotted with T-5000, too.

I hope you liked the article. Let us know what you think about this gun in the comments section.

Sources:
www.orsis.com
www.ria.ru
www.warfiles.ru

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/04/21/orsis-t-5000-rifle-description-news-rumors/