At the beginning of the 21st century, the Russian army and law enforcement agencies were faced with the problem of equipping personnel with effective short-barreled weapons.
The NEW complex of service small arms was supposed to include two main elements - ammunition and weapons. For short-barreled weapons (pistols), due to the small distances of fire contact, the main role in the complex was assigned to the ammunition (cartridge). It was assumed that the design of the cartridge should provide a high level of service safety. The choice of the cartridge was carried out on the basis of the conditions of the maximum stopping effect of the bullet with the given restrictions on the dimensions and weight of the weapon, based on the specifics of the use of the weapon. These restrictions are caused by the need to covertly carry weapons, the speed of reaction (withdrawing and aiming weapons), etc. Compared to the army, such a short-barreled weapon was supposed to provide a greater stopping effect at a shorter effective firing distance and a minimum bullet ricochet (to reduce the risk of hitting surrounding citizens). Except for special cases - the need to shoot at a car, through an obstacle (doors, partitions, etc.), at a criminal protected by means of individual body armor - bullets for new weapons should quickly lose energy in an obstacle, providing a minimal likelihood of secondary damage when it breaks through.
Taking into account that pistols are the main self-defense weapon of law enforcement officers, a new structure of this weapon has been developed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Depending on the tactics of use, it is divided into three categories: service, compact and tactical. At the same time, modern "police" short-barreled weapons use a number of cartridges with a wide range of bullet designs.
Service pistols are the main weapon of the internal affairs bodies, units and subdivisions of the internal troops, performing their duties, as a rule, in uniform. With a sufficient level of efficiency, they must ensure high safety of service handling and unpretentiousness to climatic conditions during long-term duty. It is believed that a double-action trigger mechanism is optimal for service pistols (only self-cocking without fixing the hammer in the cocked position after firing), which ensures maximum safety and responsiveness with acceptable firing accuracy. The frame of the pistol, as a rule, is made of steel, since the polymer reduces the mass of the weapon, which leads to discomfort when firing. Simple sighting devices should have anti-reflective protection and luminescent inserts for shooting in low light conditions. The handle should be comfortable for a hand of any size. Typical dimensions of a service pistol: length - 180 - 200 mm, height - 150-160 mm, weight without cartridges - 0.7 - 1.0 kg, caliber 9, 0 - 11, 43 mm.
Compact pistols are intended for operational services of law enforcement agencies who need to covertly carry the main weapon or as a second (spare) pistol for those who have service. As a rule, compact pistols use less powerful cartridges than service cartridges, although a single cartridge is preferable for both types. Compact pistols differ from service ones in smaller dimensions, weight, magazine capacity and a minimum number of protruding parts, including sights, which can make it difficult to quickly remove the weapon. Smaller grip sizes, shorter barrel and aiming line make shooting from compact pistols less comfortable and less accurate, which significantly limits their effective firing range. When using a single cartridge, it was required that the compact pistol was capable of firing both with a shortened magazine and with a magazine from a service pistol. A compact pistol for a single cartridge should be no more: length - 160 - 180 mm, height - 100 - 120 mm, weight - 0.5 - 0.8 kg, caliber 9, 0 - 11, 43 mm. Typical dimensions of a compact pistol chambered for reduced power: length - 120 - 150 mm, height 80 - 110 mm, weight 0, 4 - 0, 6 kg, caliber 5, 45 - 9, 0 (9x17) mm.
Tactical pistols are intended for arming only special units of internal affairs bodies, units and subdivisions of internal troops. As a rule, they use a more powerful cartridge and it is possible to install more attachments, such as a silencer, laser designators, tactical flashlights, collimator sights, etc.
One of the most prominent representatives of modern domestic service weapons was the 9-mm self-loading pistol, created in the late 1990s at the Tula Instrument Design Bureau under the leadership of the well-known weapon designers V. Gryazev and A. Shipunov "GSH-18" (Gryazev-Shipunov, 18 - magazine capacity).
By the end of the 1980s, with the advent of modern personal protective equipment, it was clearly revealed that the domestic 9-mm Makarov pistols (PM), which were in service with the Soviet army and law enforcement agencies, clearly lagged behind similar modern Western models. The army and law enforcement agencies needed a new pistol that could incapacitate an enemy protected by personal protective equipment, while maintaining a sufficient damaging effect at a distance of up to 25 m, and a stopping effect up to 50 m. At the same time, the bullet of the new cartridge should not yield bullet with steel core of pistol cartridge 9x19 NATO "Parabellum" and bullet with lead core of cartridge.45 ACP. The Makarov pistol was successful for its time, but in fact it turned out to be much weaker in comparison with foreign weapons of this class, designed for a more powerful cartridge. This situation was primarily due to the low stopping and penetrating effect of relatively low-power 9x18 PM cartridges.
This was due to the fact that the samples of weapons were created by some designers, and the cartridges for them - by others. Such a narrow specialization to some extent stalled scientific and technological progress in the arms business. A lot was lost on this: time, energy, and nerves. It is much more effective when one and the same organization does everything in the complex - both weapons and ammunition for it.
Tula gunsmiths, at their own peril and risk, designed a service pistol and offered it for a competition to replace the PM.
First of all, the designers Zelenko, Korolev and Volkov, led by Shipunov and Gryazev, started working on a new PBP cartridge (armor-piercing pistol cartridge). At the same time, the standard pistol 9x18 PM cartridge was taken as the base one, and the design of the bullet was based on the scheme of the SP-5 submachine gun bullet. It was decided to increase the power of the cartridge not by increasing the ballistic impulse, but by increasing the muzzle energy of a bullet with an armor-piercing core. For this, a special armor-piercing bullet with a heat-strengthened steel core in a polyethylene jacket was developed. The lighter bullet had a bimetallic shell with a bare nose part of the core. With the same ballistic impulse of the cartridge as that of the PM (0.22 kg per second), the muzzle velocity increased from 315 m per second to 500. This cartridge could be used without any improvements in the standard PM pistols. But the external impact of the bullet has changed quite a lot. If earlier a standard PM bullet from 10 meters pierced only one and a half millimeters of a 10-mm steel sheet, now from this distance the PM pistol pierced a five-millimeter sheet, which even from a distance of 0.5 m was beyond the power of even a standard American military 9-mm pistol " Beretta "M 9.
The effect of the use of new pistol cartridges, in essence, was equivalent to rearmament, only without significant financial costs and retraining of personnel. However, the PM cartridge itself still lagged behind its main competitor - the 9x19 NATO Parabellum pistol cartridge, which was one and a half times greater in momentum than the domestic one. Yarygin's Grach pistol chambered for the 9-mm Parabellum cartridge was already being developed in Izhevsk. However, both its design and the design and production technology of 9x19.000 cartridges for it (produced by the Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant) and 9x19 PSO (produced by the Tula Cartridge Plant) did not suit the Tula people. In addition, the Tula designers considered these cartridges unnecessarily heavy (cartridge weight 11, 5 and 11, 2 g - respectively).
Therefore, the KBP decided to take the 9x19 pistol cartridge as a basis for the new weapon and modernize it accordingly, using a bullet in it that is structurally similar to the PBP. The armor-piercing bullet also has a heat-strengthened steel core in a lead jacket, exposed in the front part, and a bimetallic sheath. The bullet of cartridge 7N31 weighs 4, 1 g against 6 - 7, 5 g of foreign cartridges 9x19 "Parabellum", but it has a significantly higher speed - 600 m / s. The new very powerful 9x19 pistol cartridge 7N31 with a bullet of increased penetration now provided penetration of third-class body armor or an 8-mm steel plate at a distance of up to 15 m.
When designing a pistol, Gryazev took a line to create a sample that is fundamentally new in terms of design and technology, as easy and cheap to manufacture as possible.
Before drawing the first lines of the drawing on his drawing board, Vasily Petrovich analyzed the latest designs of modern foreign pistols. He was attracted by the Austrian pistol "Glock-17", the main features of which were: a plastic frame; a striker firing mechanism, installed on a half-cocked before the shot; and no external, hand-operated fuses. The half-platoon of the drummer in this pistol was carried out in the process of rolling the casing-bolt: when not reaching the extreme forward position, the striker, placed in the casing-bolt, docked with the sear, then the return spring, overcoming the resistance of the combat, brought the bolt to the hemp of the barrel. The mainspring remained at the same time compressed by about half. When the trigger was pressed, it was cocked, after which the drummer broke off the whisper and a shot took place.
9mm pistol GSh-18 (rear view). The drummer and rear sight are clearly visible
In the process of creating the GSh-18 pistol, Gryazev decided to use the most successful elements from the Austrian pistol, including making the same plastic frame, half-platoon of the drummer and abandoning external fuses. In addition, Gryazev, like his Austrian colleague Gaston Glock, abandoned the previously obligatory attribute of most service pistols - an open-hammer trigger firing mechanism, which promised considerable benefits: the pistol being designed should have become simpler and cheaper. In addition, in this case, it became possible to bring the barrel closer to the hand. With the low position of the pistol barrel, the unpleasant perception of the recoil of the weapon during the shot was reduced by the shooter, thus allowing for a faster targeted shooting from the pistol.
The main features of this weapon include the principle of operation of automation using recoil energy with a short barrel stroke, which minimized the mass of the bolt.
When choosing the type of barrel bore locking, Gryazev resolutely rejected locking with a separate part - a swinging lever similar to the 9-mm German Walther P.38 pistol used by the designers of the Italian Beretta 92 pistol and the Russian Serdyukov pistol Gyurza PS. In the arms industry, there are other types of locking without the use of separate parts, for example, the barrel warp invented by John Moses Browning. Or locking by turning the barrel, first used by the talented Czech gunsmith Karel Krnka.
An attempt to lock the barrel by skewing from the interaction of its wedge protrusion with the frame in the style of a Glock pistol in GSH-18 was unsuccessful. This method was attractive in that the locking is performed without auxiliary parts, and in that when the barrel is skewed, the breech decreases to the magazine, which facilitated the sending of the cartridge into the chamber. Then, in the design of the GSh-18 barrel locking mechanism, an earring was used, like a TT pistol. The mechanism with the shackle had a higher efficiency, but it also did not stand up to the test in difficult conditions. Also unsuccessful was an attempt to use a barrel rotation similar to the Austrian Steyer pistol M 1912. When locking this type, the barrel rotated 60 degrees, and with such a large rotation angle, a lot of energy was spent on overcoming friction forces. The task was solved only after a sharp decrease in the angle of rotation of the barrel - to 18 degrees, while locking was carried out by turning the barrel by 10 lugs, which, in combination with a polymer frame, helps to reduce the perceived recoil. Turning the barrel after a short stroke redirected part of the recoil energy to barrel rotation, and the polymer frame made of polyamide gave the weapon optimal elasticity and rigidity.
The GSh-18 pistol received a double-action firing mechanism of the striker type with preliminary partial cocking of the striker when the shutter moves and cocking when the trigger is pressed.
The idea to use a firing mechanism with a half-cocked drummer turned out to be tempting in the new pistol. This idea, first used at the beginning of the twentieth century by Karel Krnka on the Roth pistol, after many decades of neglect, was revived by Gaston Glock, but already at the modern technological level. On Glock pistols, when the shutter casing rolled back, the mainspring did not compress, it did not compress even at the initial stage of the roll-off, only with some failure to reach the extreme forward position, the mainspring stopped with a sear through the drummer. On the remaining path, the return spring, overcoming the combat force, brought the casing-bolt to the extreme rear position, while compressing the mainspring by about half of its combat stroke.
But the idea of a half-platoon in its original form did not work for the Tula. In difficult conditions, the return spring was not always able to overcome the force of the mainspring, and the bolt stopped before reaching the barrel. And here Gryazev again acted in his own way.
On the GSh-18 pistol, when the shutter casing retreats to the extreme rear position, the mainspring located around the drummer is fully compressed. At the beginning of the roll-off, the bolt casing rushes forward under the action of two springs - returnable and combat, pushing the cartridge from the magazine into the barrel chamber on its way. The striker stops on the sear, and the bolt from the force of only one return spring reaches the end position. Thus, the idea of stopping the drummer at half cocking was realized, but in a completely different performance, much better from the point of view of the balance of energy of the recoil parts.
In his pistol, Gryazev used an 18-round magazine with a two-row, staggered arrangement of cartridges and their rearrangement at the exit in one row. By this, he greatly facilitated the layout of other pistol mechanisms, in particular, the trigger pull. At the same time, the conditions for sending the cartridge from the magazine to the barrel improved. Along with this, attention is drawn to the fact that the magazine of the GSh-18 pistol received a relatively strong feed spring, which guaranteed the reliability of the cartridge supply. The magazine latch was mounted behind the trigger guard and could easily be rearranged to either side of the pistol. With a slight pressure with the thumb, the magazine falls out of the pistol under its own weight.
One of the serious problems was that under extreme test conditions, the shutter casing sometimes completely lost the accumulated energy while rolling and stopped, resting against the bottom of the sent cartridge with the extractor. The shutter undershoot to the extreme forward position was only one and a half millimeters. However, the bolt was no longer strong enough to overcome the force of the extractor spring.
Gryazev found an elementary way out of this seemingly dead-end position - he invented a springless extractor. The extractor tooth was forced into the groove of the sleeve by the visor of the barrel, while rotating during locking. When fired, the striker, passing through the hole in the extractor, rigidly attaches it to the sleeve and firmly holds it in the rollback until it meets the reflector.
Bolt and drummer with spring of pistol GSh-18 (top view)
When the trigger is pressed, the finger first presses a small protrusion of the automatic safety into the trigger, and with further pressure on the trigger, a shot is fired. In addition, the half-cocked striker protrudes approximately 1 mm at the rear of the bolt, allowing the shooter to visually and touch the readiness of the pistol to fire. The descent stroke is about 5 mm, which is quite acceptable for a service weapon. Effort of descent - 2 kg.
The GSh-18 pistol received non-adjustable sighting devices: a replaceable front sight and a rear sight, which was mounted not on the bolt casing, but on the bolt block. In this case, the replaceable front sight can also be with luminous tritium inserts, and in the front part of the trigger guard there is a through hole intended for mounting a laser designator (LTS).
The labor intensity of the production of the GSH-18 pistol turned out to be at least three times less than that of the American Beretta M 9. pistol. steel inserts. On an injection molding machine, this process took only five minutes. At the same time, the strength of the plastic frame itself was confirmed by the most stringent tests, in particular, multiple throws of the pistol on the concrete floor from a height of 1.5 m. The widespread use of high-strength polymers in the design of the pistol made it possible to achieve an extremely small total weight of the weapon - 0.47 kg without a magazine.
The second most difficult part of the GSh-18 pistol was its breech cover. The casing-shutter and the shutter itself are different parts and can be separated with incomplete disassembly, which was done to reduce the cost of production. Previously, as a rule, the shutter casing was made of steel forging with further sequential processing on metal-cutting machines. In the Gryazev-Shipunov pistol, stamp-welded technology for the manufacture of parts, including the shutter casing, was widely used. The initial blank for its production was a blanking from 3 mm steel sheet. Following this, it was rolled up and welded. At the final stage of production, the casing-shutter was adjusted on metal-cutting machines. For greater strength, the bolt casing stamped from steel sheet received a rigidly fixed insert at the point of engagement with the barrel and the bolt block, which is removed during disassembly, in which the drummer and ejector are mounted. As a galvanic coating, a special chrome plating was used, which gave the casing a light gray color. In addition to the shutter casing, all other parts of the GSh-18 pistol were developed taking into account the minimum laboriousness of their manufacture.
Compared with foreign samples, the GSh-18 pistol received numerous advantages in many respects: it was very light, small in size, and at the same time possessed high combat qualities. If the majority of foreign army pistols weighed about 1 kg, with a total length of about 200 mm, then the GSh-18 pistol had a mass of 560 g, with cartridges - 800 g. Its length was 183 mm; at the same time, he pierced any body armor and steel sheet with a thickness of 8 mm from a distance of 22 meters. When firing, the GSh-18 pistol leads upward much less than the PM pistol. This is due to the expenditure of recoil energy on the rotational, that is, transverse, movement of the barrel. In addition, the good ergonomics of the weapon ensures the stability of the pistol during firing, allowing it to conduct aimed fire from it with a high practical rate of fire.
The GSh-18 pistol showed good performance when firing both highly effective 9x19 cartridges 7N21 and 7N31, and foreign pistol cartridges 9x19 NATO "Parabellum" and their domestic counterparts. Due to the reduced mass and increased initial velocity in combination with the armor-piercing core, the bullet of the 7N21 cartridge provided a high penetrating effect of targets protected by body armor of the 3rd protection class (penetrating the standard army body armor 6BZ-1 with titanium armor plates + 30 layers of Kevlar at a distance of up to 50 m), while maintaining a sufficient over-the-counter action to defeat the enemy protected by body armor. The parameters of the 7N31 cartridge are even higher. In addition, the high muzzle velocity of the bullet significantly reduced the lead when firing at moving targets.
The creators of the GSh-18 pistol are A. G. Shipunov (left) and V. P. Gryazev
Ultimately, the Tula designers created a new complex "pistol + cartridge", much more effective than other similar samples in combat use, since in terms of penetration of solid barriers when firing 7N31 cartridges, none of the existing army pistols can be compared with it to this day. …
The reliability of the new pistol allowed it to pass the entire program of field and state tests that took place in 2000. There were practically no serious complaints about the GSh-18 pistol or its 7N31 cartridge, except for complaints about one of the characteristic features of this weapon - the shutter casing open in front. Critics of the Gryazev-Shipunov pistol expressed fears that the bolt cover would be easily accessible for dirt, although the Tula designers were able to prove that dirt was thrown out of the bolt cover during a shot.
Already in the same 2000, the powerful GSh-18 pistol complex entered service with the Ministry of Justice. On March 21, 2003, by decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 166, the GSh-18 pistol was adopted, along with PYa pistols designed by Yarygin and SPS designed by Serdyukov, into service with special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Tactical and technical characteristics
Caliber …………………………………………………….9 mm
Cartridge …………………..9 × 19 "Luger", 7N31 and 7N21
Weapon weight without cartridges ………………………………………………………0, 59 kg
Length …………………………………………………… 183.5 mm
Barrel length …………………………………………. 103 mm
Bullet speed
at a distance of 10 m ………………………….535-570 m / s
Effective rate of fire ……….15-20 rds / min
Magazine capacity …………………………. 18 rounds
