Judging by the latest gestures in the armament of the armies of the leading countries of the world, it was decided to stake on snipers. Otherwise, it is simply not possible to explain such an active development of sniper weapons, as well as the fact that they did not have time to adopt one sample, it is replaced by another more advanced one. Naturally, such a turnover is far from a good phenomenon, especially from the financial side of the issue, but if you look at the fact that the army is getting new and new samples of sniper rifles almost uninterruptedly, that is, this is the positive side. I think that no one would have made such expenses just like that, therefore we can conclude that the already considerable importance of a sniper in battle will become even greater.
Not so long ago, we tried to deal with the Arctic Warfare series of sniper rifles, and they have already tried to write them off. Or rather, not so much to write off as to recognize them as obsolete. In particular, in February 2009, the US Special Operations Command announced a competition for a new family of sniper rifles, unified enough among themselves so that there would be no problems with the supply and repair of weapons and at the same time effective enough to perform all assigned tasks in various calibers. To exclude amateur activities with ammunition to improve the characteristics of the weapon, it was strictly stipulated for which cartridges the weapon was created. So, to some extent, this competition slows down the development of weapons in general, since, perhaps, in the process of developing weapons, a new decent ammunition for sniper shooting would appear. This was far from the only requirement for a new family of weapons. In addition to this, a mandatory requirement was the ability to fire, both from the right and from the left shoulder, which, given the creation of weapons with manual reloading, was a rather strange requirement. Naturally, no one wanted to adapt their rifles in order to be able to rearrange the bolt handle from the right to the left side, so in general such a requirement can be called a convention, which only influenced the absence of weapons in the bullpup layout among the competitive samples. Also, separate requirements were imposed on accuracy, which was supposed to be equal to one angular minute for a series of 10 shots for all ammunition at reasonable distances up to 1500 meters for large-caliber weapons. On the one hand, such a requirement is not the most difficult, on the other hand, it is not so easy to ensure the mass production of weapons with the unification of models among themselves. Also, special requirements were imposed on the reliability of the rifles, which had to withstand 1000 shots before the first delay. The dimensions of the complex should not exceed 1320 millimeters, and the weapon should also have a folding butt, which would reduce the length during transportation to 1016 millimeters. The weight of the weapon, which should not have exceeded 8 kilograms with a magazine loaded with five rounds, was not ignored, which is not a very reasonable requirement, given that the family of weapons should have had a rifle chambered for.50BMG. However, such a rifle clearly did not fit into the general requirements, so an exception was naturally made for it. Separate requirements were imposed on the disassembly / assembly of weapons. So the disassembly should have taken no more than two minutes, and after assembly, the rifles should not have required re-zeroing. In addition to this, there were other requirements, but I think it is not worth listing all of them, and it is clear that the requirements were, although reasonable, but rather strict. The designers were given a little time - until March 3, 2010.
It is clear that those wishing to participate in the competition were not measured, because a victory meant a very large order, and, consequently, a lot of money. Many offered ready-made samples, the attempt, of course, is not the smartest, but it was worth trying. Among those who tried was the company Accuracy International, which offered its Arctic Warfare series of rifles and, naturally, was refused, as the weapon did not meet the requirements. The company did not refuse to participate in the competition after it received a "turn from the gate", but on the contrary was actively involved in the work on the creation of a new family of weapons. The designers managed to manage even ahead of schedule, already in January 2010 two samples were presented for.308 Win and.338 LM cartridges, which had the designation AI AX308 and AI AX338, respectively, both rifles could be adapted for firing.300 Win cartridges when replaced barrel, bolt and magazines. In general, to be honest, we are talking about the same rifle, since there are no differences between the options for.338 and.308, well, except for the barrel, bolt and magazines, of course.
The rifle, equipped for firing.338 LM cartridges, weighs 7, 8 kilograms without ammunition. The total length of the weapon is 1250 millimeters with a barrel length of 686 millimeters. This rifle is powered by detachable box magazines with a capacity of 5 or 10 rounds. If the weapon is adapted for firing with.308 Win cartridges, then its weight is reduced to 6.1 kilograms, the length of the weapon is reduced to 1020 millimeters, while the barrel is reduced to 508 millimeters.
The appearance of the weapon, although cute, does not cause delight anymore, since it has become boring. Folding to the left, seemingly flimsy, in fact, a fairly strong butt has the ability to smoothly adjust its length, which provides an accurate fit for a shooter of any size and in any clothing. The stop for the cheek arrow is also adjustable, but in steps. In the lower part of the butt there is an additional stop, which is adjustable in height and facilitates the task of continuous monitoring of a certain area, since the weight of the weapon can be distributed between it and the bipod. The pistol grip does not stand out for anything remarkable at first glance, but if you look closely, you will notice that its rear part is replaceable and can be replaced with another one. That is, the weapon can also be adjusted under the hand of the shooter. For the second hand, a slotted pad is installed in front of the magazine to prevent possible slipping. With the mounting strips at the weapon, as usual, the maximum overkill, although you can easily get rid of it. The upper fastening bar, as usual, is made non-removable and is located on the receiver, its continuation, the side and lower ones can be replaced with fastening bars of a shorter or longer length. Separately, it should be noted that the folding and height-adjustable bipods are not installed on the mounting bar, but are mounted in the mounting holes for the slats, although there may be a wide variety of variations. It is noteworthy that one of the mounting straps is also located on the bottom of the butt. I personally do not see any use for it other than to retain an additional store. Weapon controls are, as always, limited to a very small set of bolt-action rifles. The only thing that deserves attention is the fuse switch, which is made in the form of a separate lever behind the shutter handle. The barrels of the weapon can be used in a wide variety of ways, all of them are free-hanging, which is due to the design of the rifle, they can have a smooth outer surface, as well as valleys, to increase the rigidity of the barrels. To reduce the force of recoil when firing, the weapon is equipped with specially designed muzzle brakes-recoil compensators, which, as far as possible, have a minimal effect on the accuracy of fire. The muzzle brakes themselves, recoil compensators are installed on the thread located at the muzzle of the barrel, a silent firing device can be installed on the same thread, although its design options are very limited and significantly increase the length of the weapon, since the PBS cannot enter the barrel itself because of the forend with fastening strips.
In the bolt group, a lot was taken from the AW rifle series, but there are some changes. First of all, for.308 and.300 ammunition, the thickness of the bolt stem was increased by 2 millimeters, this was necessary to create valleys on the surface of the bolt. Thanks to these valleys, the rifle shows very high reliability when working in adverse conditions, since sand, mud and ice are simply squeezed out without interfering with the movement of the bolt. From the Arctic Warfare family of sniper rifles, a special coating has been transferred to the bolt, which prevents it from icing. The basic essence of the locking principle has remained unchanged. The bolt locks the bore by 3 stops when turning 60 degrees. They also decided not to touch the trigger mechanism of the weapon, it, as before, has a trigger with a warning, and the force of pressing the trigger can be adjusted in the range from 1.5 to 2 kgf. The trigger travel can also be adjusted, limited to a limit of 13 millimeters.
Much attention was paid to the camouflage of weapons. All rifle pads are easily replaceable, they can be black, green or light brown; in addition, the manufacturer offers pads of absolutely any color, even pink or under the skin of a leopard - the desire of the customer with money is the law.
As noted earlier, in addition to these rifles, a little later, a large-caliber version of the weapon was presented. A large-caliber rifle with the designation AX50 uses.50BMG ammunition, they are also 12, 7x99, it is also a non-self-loading bolt-action rifle. In general, the weapon can not be described, since it almost completely repeats the previous versions of rifles, naturally in scale, but there is still some difference. Since the larger ammunition required an increase in many weapon assemblies, switching the fuse in the form in which it was originally turned out to be inconvenient, so it was decided to replace it with another one. Instead of a protruding fuse switch, a switch box appeared, recessed in the case, but this did not become inconvenient for switching with the thumb of the holding hand. Actually, this is the only difference, everything else is done exactly, as well as in smaller-caliber versions.
The length of the weapon with the butt unfolded is 1370 millimeters, with 1115 millimeters folded. The weight of the weapon is 12.5 kilograms. In other words, a large-caliber sniper rifle in its class is far from being the heaviest and largest. The rifle barrel length is 692 millimeters. The weapon is fed from detachable magazines with a single-row arrangement of ammunition with a capacity of 5 rounds.
The company Accuracy International also did not forget about the civilian arms market and released a huge number of weapon options for a wide variety of ammunition..338 LM,.300 WM,.308 Win,.223 Rem,.234 Win,.243 Win,.260 Rem, 6.5 Creedmoor and this is not a complete list of those cartridges for which samples for the civilian market were created.
Summing up everything written above, it is worth noting that there is a replacement for the Arctic Warfare family of rifles and is quite good. However, here it is rather necessary to look not as a replacement for weapons, but as a further development with a different designation, since many nodes have been retained, while others have been improved. One way or another, no one has yet spoken about the complete discontinuation of the AW series of rifles, since too many countries have adopted them, but in the future Arctic Warfare will lose their relevance and will be replaced by other samples, perhaps even those described in this article. After all, everyone knows that until they start working on ammunition or come up with something fundamentally new, each new model of weapon is only slightly better than the previous one, and many are ready to give a lot of money for this slight improvement. And even when developing something really unique, superior in characteristics to the existing samples, it is unlikely that someone will abandon the time-tested designs in one day and switch to a new one, even if the best at the test site, but not tested in battle. We seem to be moving forward, but marking time.
