In the fifties, in connection with the rearmament of our army, the designers were given the task of creating a self-loading sniper rifle. Yevgeny Fedorovich Dragunov, already well-known by that time the inventor of a number of models of a sports rifle, also joined in this work.
A few lines from the designer's biography. Born in 1920 in the city of Izhevsk in a family of hereditary gunsmiths. After graduating from high school, he entered an industrial technical school. Then - work at the factory. In 1939, after being drafted into the army, he was sent to the school for junior commanders.
Later, after demobilization in 1945, he worked as a senior gunsmith. About what difficulties the design group faced. - the testimony of Dragunov himself: When designing, we had to overcome a number of contradictions. For example, for reliable operation of a rifle in difficult conditions, it needs to have large gaps between moving parts, and in order to have better accuracy, it is necessary to fit everything as tightly as possible. Or, say, the rifle should be light, but for better accuracy - the heavier to a certain limit, the better. In general, we came to the finals already in 1962, having experienced a series of failures and successes. Suffice it to say that we have been busy with the store for over a year. The forend assembly, seemingly downtime, turned out to be the most difficult, and we finalized it at the very end. It is curious that the SVD prevailed in a difficult competition. Simultaneously with Dragunov, A. Konstantinov's group was involved in the development. Both designers submitted their samples at almost the same time. These samples have undergone the most severe tests. The Dragunov rifle showed the best results in terms of shooting accuracy and accuracy of the battle, these characteristics that are most important for a sniper weapon. what. ultimately, and determined the outcome of the tests.
In 1963, the SVD was adopted by our army. The Dragunov sniper rifle is designed to destroy emerging, moving, open and cloaked single targets. The rifle is a self-loading weapon, aimed fire is conducted with single shots.
The main part of the rifle's automation is the bolt carrier, which perceives the effect of powder gases through the gas piston and the pusher. The reloading handle, located on the right, is made in one piece with the bolt carrier. The recoil mechanism of the rifle with two coil springs. The trigger mechanism allows only single fire. Flag fuse, double acting. It simultaneously locks the trigger and restricts the movement of the bolt carrier back, supporting the reloading handle. The trigger ensures the firing of a shot only when the bolt is completely locked. The firing mechanism is assembled in a separate housing.
A flame arrester with five longitudinal slots is mounted on the muzzle of the barrel, which also camouflages a shot during night operations and protects the barrel from contamination. The presence of a gas regulator for changing the recoil speed of moving parts ensures the reliability of the rifle in operation.
The rifle is equipped with mechanical (open), optical (PSO-1M2) sights or night sights: NSPUM (SVDN2) or NSPU-3 (SVDN3)
For firing from SVD, rifle cartridges 7, 62x53 are used: ordinary, tracer and armor-piercing incendiary bullets. To increase the accuracy of the battle to the rifle, a special sniper cartridge with a bullet with a steel core has been developed, which provides 2.5 times better accuracy of fire than conventional cartridges.
According to most experts, the rifle is ergonomically well designed: the weapon inspires the shooter with complete confidence, is well balanced, and is easily held when making an aimed shot. Compared to a conventional magazine sniper rifle, the practical rate of fire of which is about 5v / m, the Dragunov rifle, according to experts, reaches 30 aimed shots per minute.
Country of origin Russia
Tactical and technical characteristics:
Caliber, mm 7, 62
Weight without cartridges and sight, kg 4, 2
Length, mm 1220
Height with optical sight, mm 230
Width with optical sight, mm 88
Barrel length, mm 620
Bullet muzzle velocity, m / s 830
Rate of fire, in / m 30
Muzzle energy, J 4064
Magazine capacity, cartridges 10
Sighting range with an open sight, 1200 m
Sighting range with optical sight, m 1300
Sighting range with night sight, m 300
The rifle automatics acts by removing powder gases through an opening in the wall of the barrel bore. The barrel bore is locked by turning the bolt counterclockwise. This scheme was tested by Dragunov in sporting weapons. In contrast to the scheme of the Kalashnikov assault rifle (locking on two lugs by turning the bolt clockwise), the cartridge rammer is used as a third lug, which made it possible, with the same transverse dimensions of the bolt and the angle of rotation, to increase the area of the lugs by about one and a half times. Three supporting surfaces provide a stable bolt position, which contributes to an increase in the accuracy of fire.
