The answer to this question is very difficult: large-caliber rifles create a powerful flash and rumble like artillery weapons, and silent samples do not have a long firing range. You have to choose which is more important: stealth or power.
The solution to the sniper dilemma came from the city that is traditionally considered in Russia as the smithy of all new weapons - Tula. The gunsmiths of TsKIB SOO (Central Design Research Bureau for Sports and Hunting Weapons - a branch of the Instrument Design Bureau) have developed a unique sniper rifle "Exhaust" - large-caliber and at the same time silent.
In fact, "Exhaust" is the name of the program by which the weapon complex was developed: a rifle and ammunition. The official abbreviation is a large-caliber sniper rifle - VKS, or SV-1367. The order for the development came from the Special Forces Center of the FSB of Russia: the special forces wanted to get a weapon capable of secretly destroying a target protected by armor at a great distance.
The order for weapons with unusual properties came from the Special Forces Center of the FSB of Russia
The main requirement of the special forces was the ability to covertly destroy a target located at a sufficiently large distance and protected by armor or some kind of cover. It turned out to be impossible to solve the problem with the use of existing models of weapons or ammunition, so the Tula gunsmiths began to create a whole complex - a large-caliber rifle plus ammunition.
Slowly and inevitably
The creation of the "Exhaust" complex began with the development of ammunition. Since it was supposed to work at long distances, they took the 12.7 mm caliber as a basis. In Russia, the 12.7 x 108 cartridge, developed back in 1930, was traditionally used to defeat remote targets, which is used in large-caliber sniper rifles, easel and aircraft machine guns. Such ammunition is capable of hitting targets at a distance of more than 1 km and penetrating armor steel sheets with a thickness of more than 10 mm.
A silvery bullet with an unusual shape
has a steel core inside and weighs 79 g. From 100 m such a projectile will penetrate almost any body armor.
However, the old cartridge turned out to be too long for the "Exhaust" complex. Tula gunsmiths decided to create a new ammunition of 12, 7 x 54 caliber. The lethal product received the general index SC-130 and several different types of bullets. Moreover, even the lightest of these bullets was significantly heavier than all previously created for this caliber. The version with the PT index weighs 59 g, and the heaviest UPU is 79 at all - a real heavyweight.
The severity of the projectile is not only the increased energy of the ammunition, which allows it to fly further and hit harder, but also the reduced exit speed from the barrel. The fact is that a decrease in the speed of a bullet to subsonic indicators (usually less than 300 m / s) is one of the most common ways to make a shot quieter: objects moving faster than the speed of sound are accompanied by a shock wave, which is subjectively perceived by observers as a loud bang. Thus, the Tula gunsmiths were able to "get what cannot be" - they made a powerful cartridge, which does not rumble like a cannon.
Tula gunsmiths abandoned the traditional "bolt" bolt in favor of a longitudinally sliding
The reloading handle moves in a straight line, which is very convenient (in the case of a bolt action, you would have to turn the handle, take it back, and then put it back in place in the reverse order). The handle itself has a built-in pre-release lever. To pull the bolt back, the shooter must squeeze the "halves" of the handle together, thereby unblocking the bolt itself and hooking the spent sleeve on the rim to remove it from the receiver.
True, you have to pay for everything: in comparison with the standard cartridge 12, 7, which is capable of hitting targets at distances of 1500-2000 m, the new ammunition demonstrates an aiming range of 600-800 m., such as the Russian OSV-96 or the American Barret M82. They needed not only a powerful and accurate, but also a silent weapon.
All STs-130 cartridges can be conditionally divided into two types - increased accuracy and increased penetration. The bullet of the cartridge of increased penetration capacity has a steel core inside and has a rather bizarre shape, reminiscent of a multistage rocket. Such a "rocket" at distances of up to 200 m is capable of piercing a sheet of armor steel 16 mm thick, and from 100 m it will pierce almost any existing body armor.
In addition to armor plates, such a cartridge can easily pierce a wooden wall or brickwork up to 10 cm thick. At the same time, there is no doubt that wherever the bullet of the SC-130 cartridge hits, its victim is practically doomed: a dynamic blow to any part of the hull with such a caliber is certain death. and in case of hitting a limb - guaranteed separation and severe blood loss. By the way, the Exhaust store can hold five of these deadly cartridges.
To install the optical sight, you do not need to remove the front sight and rear sight, you just need to fold them
In case of problems with optics, the mechanical sight is always ready.
Size matters
Having decided on the ammunition, the designers developed a "delivery tool" for it. First of all, it was necessary to make the weapon noiseless. If subsonic speed contributes to this in ammunition, then a silent firing device (PBS) is used in weapons, more simply - a silencer.
To effectively drown out the cotton from a shot with such a powerful cartridge, a very large silencer is needed. PBS turned out to be frightening: huge, almost half a meter. But the result is amazing: the Exhaust's shot is so quiet that it is more like the click of an air rifle. According to the subjective opinion of the author of the article, the sound of a VKS shot is even quieter than that of its colleagues - special silent VSS Vintorez and VSK-94 rifles, and the caliber of these samples is 9 mm versus 12.7 mm for Vykhlop. In a busy urban environment, such a click will not be heard already from a couple of tens of meters.
A fighter can fire quite comfortably without shooting headphones. The sound of a shot does not in the least injure the shooter's ears, even if the fire is being fired in a deaf, closed bunker, and anyone who has ever fired from a weapon of 12, 7 caliber knows: even "in the air" such a shot can concussion, and in an enclosed space it is guaranteed to injure organs of hearing.
Pre-breakaway lever
protects against spontaneous inertial reloading of weapons under the influence of a powerful recoil impulse when fired.
Having solved the issue of noiselessness, the designers were faced with a new task: a huge silencer promised to significantly increase the size of the rifle. And if we are at the very least accustomed to standard samples of 12.7 caliber, 1.5 m in length, this one would be guaranteed to stretch two meters, standing in a row with anti-tank rifles of the Second World War. For a weapon that is supposed to be used secretly, such dimensions are unacceptable.
To save the cherished centimeters, it was decided to take the bullpup system as a basis - not the most familiar for sniper weapons, but a fairly common layout scheme. In it, the magazine with cartridges is not located in front of the fire control handle, but behind it. In this case, the need for a butt disappears, since its role is played by the receiver shifted back with a recoil pad.
The bullpup arrangement allows you to significantly reduce the length of the weapon as a whole, while maintaining the length of the barrel. But the shooting distance directly depends on the length of the barrel. As a result, the designers managed to create a large-caliber rifle with a length of just over half a meter and weighing a little more than 5 kg. With the silent firing device installed, the length is 1125 mm, and the weight is 7 kg.
In the design of the weapon, it was decided to use a manual reloading scheme, which gives higher accuracy and accuracy of fire compared to automatic samples. The recoil of such a weapon is less, since there is no inertia from the movement of the shutter inside the receiver. Finally, such a design is simpler and lighter, which affects reliability and convenience.
Nominally, the SV-1367 is equipped with mechanical sighting devices - front sight and the whole. An optical sight can be mounted on the rifle, for which a Picatinny rail is mounted on the top of the receiver. To prevent the front sight and rear sight from blocking the optics, they were made foldable. This is also useful because if the sight is suddenly damaged, the shooter can always raise the mechanical sights and use them.
Shot for the future
The development of the VKS "Exhaust" was started back in 2002. The classification of the new complex was removed relatively recently, so for a long time nothing was known about its existence. Today the rifle is used in several special units of various power structures of the Russian Federation.
Due to the specificity of the tasks and the high cost of the rifle, it was made in a very small batch. According to information in the media, in Tula, on the basis of this product and ammunition for it, another type of weapon is being developed - the ASh-12 assault machine. However, the representatives of the arms enterprise themselves do not confirm this information.
