The article on arrow-shaped bullets mentioned the Ascoria sniper rifle, which is a prototype weapon developed by Ukrainian designers. Despite the fact that the weapon officially remained only a prototype, there is information that this rifle was spotted in recent military conflicts, and there are even witnesses who saw this weapon live in the form of trophies. We will not rant about whether this weapon was involved somewhere or not and in which direction its barrel was turned, since the topic is rather slippery, but you need to figure out what kind of animal it is, and why it is better or worse than more familiar samples.
The main feature of the weapon, of course, is the ammunition. The funniest thing is that it is not known for certain what kind of ammunition is used in the weapon, in most sources the information is very diverse, which proves the “experimentality” of this weapon. Apparently, the designers simply did not finally decide on the ammunition, which was supposed to become the main one for the weapon. Nevertheless, the most often mentioned is the cartridge, which was developed by Dvoryaninov and Shiryaev back in the 60s of the last century. This cartridge had a total length of 124 millimeters and a weight of 47 grams. The cartridge case has a rim, the caliber of the elements crimping the arrow is 13.2 mm. The weight of the boom together with the elements increasing the caliber is 17.5 grams. The initial speed of the arrow is about one and a half kilometers per second.
A notable feature is that the caliber of the arrow increases not due to plastic, but due to a conventional lead bullet in a sheath, which has a hole for the arrow in the center and is divided lengthwise into two equal parts. Thanks to this, it was possible to use the rifled barrel of the weapon without the risk of disruption of the projectile from the rifling at a sufficiently high speed of movement. In order for the arrow itself not to move inside the bullet, there are annular grooves on the arrow itself and protrusions inside the divided bullet, thus, the arrow is securely fixed and its breakdown is excluded. After the projectile leaves the barrel of the weapon, the elements increasing the caliber are separated from the arrow and simply fall to the ground, while the arrow itself continues to fly to the target with a sufficiently high speed, while having a huge direct shot range.
Having a tremendous flight speed, such an arrow is excellent for hitting moving targets, and the shooter may have minimal experience with such a weapon for a successful hit, while in the hands of an experienced shooter, a weapon with such projectile speeds becomes a reliable and reliable means of engaging an enemy. It is not difficult to imagine what a wound with such an arrow would look like, but even this was not enough when designing the ammunition, the arrow has an incision on its body, which does not affect ballistics due to the high speed of movement, but when it hits even an unprotected target, it causes the arrow to deform. literally turning the place of hit into minced meat.
But shooting at the enemy's manpower is not the main task of weapons for such ammunition - it is too expensive to shoot. Most often, such ammunition and weapons for them are developed for firing at lightly armored vehicles, how effectively this can be judged by the following results. At a distance of 600 meters, an arrow fired from the barrel of an Ascoria rifle pierces through a steel sheet 50 millimeters thick. Well, now about the weapon itself.
The Ascoria sniper rifle is a sample that is not quite in the usual layout. The weapon store is located in the same place as the handle at an angle, which made it possible to shorten the length of the weapon and at the same time not create inconveniences when firing or reloading the rifle. True, this increased the thickness of the rifle, but, in my opinion, this is not so critical for this type of weapon. Much more interesting is that the weapon weighed only 7 kilograms, with a length of 1165 millimeters. In other words, such a sample can be easily carried by one person, and the weapon can be delivered where only a person thinks to climb. However, there were some negative aspects. The kinetic energy of the projectile is about 19.5 kJ, which creates a significant recoil when firing, and if the weight of the weapon is low, such recoil becomes simply intolerable to the shooter. Apparently, some kind of trick is used to compensate for the recoil when firing, but that this is not known for certain. The rifle is self-loading, the automatics is built according to the scheme with the removal of powder gases from the bore, it is powered from detachable box magazines with a capacity of 5 to 10 rounds.
It is not difficult to imagine what an advantage a small detachment will receive with the support of a sniper armed with such weapons, here is the fight against lightly armored vehicles and the defeat of enemy manpower, but it all comes down to the cost of producing such ammunition, well, at least according to the official version. In my opinion, the real cost of such cartridges with an arrow-shaped bullet is greatly exaggerated and with sufficient initial investment in mass production, the cost of a cartridge with an arrow-shaped bullet is unlikely to exceed the cost of a conventional rifle cartridge by more than two times.
It is noteworthy that there is information that both Russia and China are producing such cartridges in small batches, which means that serial samples of weapons for cartridges with arrow-shaped bullets are on the way. The only question is whether this time handguns will switch to a new type of cartridges, since attempts to distribute cartridges with an arrow-shaped bullet have been unsuccessfully undertaken for more than half a century.
