The development of the Dragunov designated marksman’s rifle was spurred by the NATO adoption of the 7.62x51mm cartridge. The Red Army had standardized on a new suite of infantry weapons using the intermediate-sized 7.62x39mm round, and feared being out-ranged in open terrain by NATO units. The Soviet squad needed some way to reach out and engage a NATO machine gun or antitank weapon that might be beyond the range of their RPD light machine gun. And so in 1957, specifications were issued for a new 7.62x54Rmm precision rifle.
Three designers responded with proposals; Dragunov, Konstatinov, and Simonov. The Simonov was not really suitable (it was ascaled-up SKS in essence), and the Konstantinov was not as accurate as the Dragunov. And so, Evgeniy Dragunov’s rifle was adopted in 1963 as the SVD. Dragunov himself was a talented competitive marksman, and this experience undoubtedly contributed to the quality of hhis design. The SVD is a rotating bolt rifle with a lightweight short-stroke gas piston and a light-be-accurate barrel. It was issued to ever squad in mechanized infantry units, and was an important part of infantry armament, still in service today.
Video on detail differences between SVD, Tiger, and NDM-86:
Video interview with Max Popenker on Dragunov history:
And just what do you mean by “accuracy”? Ian raises a good point when talking about the required accuracy for the Dragunov.
These days accuracy seems to be mono-focused on what would be required for a gentile, polite marksmanship competition. But many of the firearms that Ian presents are for military use. I would think 5 inches at 100 yards would still be sufficiently deadly for the purpose required on a battlefield.
According to https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%94%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B3%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0 there was change made in 1975, pitch of rifling was changed. This was done in order to lessen spread of AP-I bullets, but did have side effect of increasing spread of normal and sniper bullets. Old-rifling SVD is considered fit for usage if hits at 100 m are inside circle with diameter of 8 cm, for new-rifling SVD it is 10 cm.
5 inches at 100 yards was what was requested to the ordinary M1 and M14.
Seems a little too wide a spread. 5″ at 100 is 25″ at 500.
Would think a DMR would be at least 1.5″ or lower at 100.
But just an opinion
A DMR still has a target that is several feet long and two feet wide. An inch or two “off target” will still get the job done.
As said, 5″ at 100 yard was what was requested to the ordinary M1 and M14.
An ordinary infantry rifle was made to hit human/sized targets up to 300m/yards distance and, considered 15″/38cm is already “shoulder width”, and the target can very well be in prone position, a wider dispersion would mean the shooter could very well miss the target even with perfect aim.
True enough about a small target. But the ultimate purpose of suppressive fire is not just about killing an enemy soldier. Causing the enemy to flee or to stay under cover, thus being out of the fight, is just as useful.
You would like a DMR of greater accuracy. The Soviets, on the other hand? Different desires, different ideas.
Do not forget that the AK was never envisioned as the basic infantry weapon; it was supposed to serve as a specialist-role submachinegun replacement, with the SKS serving as the infantry rifle. Those ideas changed, and by the time the SVD was procured, the idea was basically “Spray large numbers of bullets with AK-armed effectively untrained conscripts”. The SVD was intended to give the smattering of actual trained marksmen (usually through DOSAAF) something effective to make use of their greater skills.
The entire complex of Soviet small arms was designed with utterly alien ideas and preconceptions about how combat worked. It’s unsurprising that the weapons they turned out did not have the same ideas and characteristics imbuing them that their competitors did.
Something like the StG57 would have never been designed or procured by the Soviets. The entire set of ideas behind that rifle might have been expressed by some obscure intelligence operative in the Soviet system, but so far as actually spending resources exploring them? Nope; no way, no how.
People need to really wrap their heads around the fact that weapons are designed in accordance with the ideas and worldviews of the designers and the people telling those designers what to build. Soviets had a different worldview than the rest of the world, so of course their weapons were going to be different.
The Dragunov SVD is one of those weapons that people look at and critique based on their own ideas, not the ideas of the system that procured it.
Yes, the accuracy and the “stamina” of said accuracy is not what we’d think appropriate for the mission we think it has, but that’s not how they were thinking. It’s a product of the “quality triage” that the Soviet Union applied to a lot of things, like the wartime T-34/85 tanks: Just good enough to get into action, kill some of the enemy, and then be killed in turn. If a T-34/85 broke down just as it killed it’s requisite number of enemy tanks, well… That was a perfect solution, so far as the Soviets were concerned. Anything else? Well, if it didn’t achieve what they wanted in terms of effect, then they had a problem and needed to egg the quality pudding a bit more… If it was still running after taking out the desired number of enemy, then the “quality” dials back at the plant needed to be turned down, a bit.
That was the mentality, the mindset. You and I look at it, and the conceptions behind it all seem insane, but that’s what they wanted and got out of their system. “Just good enough” was what they wanted, and that way of thinking infused and suffused their entire military-industrial complex.
Frankly, I think the whole thing was of a piece with the rest of the Soviet “Planned from Above” mentality, in that they thought it was possible to achieve some sort of God-like certainty on these matters, and then base an economy/civilization on such arrogance. In the end…? Didn’t work out too well, and here we are.
Critiquing the Dragunov SVD on the basis of “insufficient accuracy” is a bit like critiquing your neighbor the yak or reindeer herder for the quality of his dairy output. He’s not trying for high-butterfat cow’s milk, he’s concerned with the yak or reindeer equivalent… You’re the one who has mistaken the situation, more than anything else.
Speaking about the SVD, one should take into account an important point.
At that time, the West already had mass-produced self-loading rifles that, when equipped with optics, could serve as a “sharpshooter’s” weapon. Recently, a colleague from Switzerland and I tested the G1 rifles (a variant of the FN Fal for Germany), G3, and the Swiss rifle 57 at a distance of 300 meters. Even without optics, these rifles are quite capable of hitting a target (half of the hull). At that time, the main weapon in the USSR was the AK/AKM, which had worse ballistics. The Soviet military saw that on the battlefield they needed to supplement their weapons system to enable soldiers to hit targets outside the effective fire range of the AK/AKM.
At the same time, the Soviet rifle was originally created as a weapon for the best shooters. In this role, it was clearly more reliable and effective than standard army rifles, on which an optical sight was installed.
What is interesting to add is that the USSR always wanted to make a self-loading sniper rifle. After the failure with the SVT, there was a series of competitions that went on continuously since 1944. The SVD was not the result of one competition, but of a very long process.
It’s just that these samples remained experimental and are not known to the general public.
In that vein, people read the actual Soviet manuals on zeroing the vintovka Mosina and are astonished that they weren’t going for the 4-m.o.a. “rifleman’s standard.”
As far as the T-34 analogy goes: the tread pins slip out toward the rear, toward the tank hull. This is so they can be easily replaced or tinkered/buggered with by the mechanics in the field. But they’ll fall out. Soviet design solution: Weld a metal plate onto the hull between the body and the tread. As the tread goes by, it drags the pin against the plate, which pushes it back into place.
Why paint the interior? Heck, during extreme duress, why bother to paint it at all?
I’m not sure if this is well and truly a very first “purpose built DMR?” I’ll see what the experts write…
Let’s see if I have this Cold-War to post-Cold War section/squad “loadout” right?
USA: Sgt. with M16A1, 7x M16A1s, 2x grenadiers with M203 grenade launchers.
MG+AT weapons: M60 GPMG + pistol, 2x M16A1s. M67 recoilless rifle + pistol, plus assistant with another pistol.
USSR: 10 per BTR/BMP 1 pistol, 4-5x Kalashnikovs, 1 RPG-7 or SVD rifle, 2x crew of PK GPMG or extra Kalashnikov and +1 RPK longer-barrel Kalashnikov.
Post-Cold War: DMRs in Nato squads. Carl Gustaf 8.4cm recoilless rifle aka. M3 MAAWS or similar AT rockets. M249 SAW or M27 IAR as belt-fed or magazine fed Nato RPK longer-barrel Kalashnikov, M249/ FN MAG as stand-in for PKM, etc.
Of course now there’ll be the 6.8x51mm CC aka .277 “Fury.” what with 80,000psi and 2-2.7m/ 6 to 9 feet less drop at 1,000 yards/ 914 meters, and negating body armor and all that…
“Just good enough”, produced in massive quantities was the Soviet approach. The Germans went for all the bells and whistles and produced far fewer tanks.
Quantity has its own quality.
Which is an ethos/mentality that works… Until it doesn’t.
What you’re seeing play out in Ukraine right now is the generational culmination of that meme about “quantity”. The entire Russian war effort there was based on the idea that there was some cornucopia of manpower somewhere in the Urals, constantly spitting forth young men to send off to war half-trained and under-equipped. Turns out, no such cornucopia existed, and with the fact that the elites of Russia didn’t exactly stay on top of the demographics, here we are.
The next year or two will show whether I’m correct in my assertions. I wish that I were not, but… I’m pretty sure that the desperation demonstrated by recruiting North Koreans for front-line service is what you’d term “a sign”.
You have to achieve balance and moderation in your warfighting strategy and operations; too much one way, you wind up like modern Russia, bereft of actual manpower because of the choices made by Stalin and his minions. The victory achieved in 1945 came at a very high cost, and the follow-on idiots did not take steps to ensure that their demographics didn’t collapse… Indeed, they seem to have gone out of their way to ensure that those numbers did collapse, mostly due to the immiseration of the average ethnic Russian’s life.
In the final analysis, the defeat of Russia took place starting in 1990, when the new leadership took charge and then took no really effective action to undo the damage wrought by all the forced-draft industrialization and diversion of resources to military uses. The Soviet chemical industries never produced enough fertilizer, so the agricultural sector did not provide enough indigenous food production… After the Union fell apart, then all that capacity went to the civilian economy, things turned around a little, and managed to eke out a better life for all Russians. Two-plus years of diversion to the military and sanctions…? Go have a look at the production numbers for the winter harvest; with the drought that’s been taking place, a bunch of Russians are gonna go hungry this winter and next spring.
You cannot continuously trade manpower for victory; France is living evidence. After the Napoleonic idiocies, the 1870 fiasco, and the slaughter of WWI? You wonder why France collapsed in ’40? Do you need it spelled out? Christ on a crutch, there are still regions of metropolitan France that are bare of people, where they were historically present for hundreds of years before Napoleon.
“Quantity has a quality of it’s own” sounds great, right up until you begin assessing where that attitude winds up taking your demographics. You have to remember that the object of the entire concept of “War” is to win decisively and long-term. Does you no good at all to win this generation, and then watch as you and your people get curb-stomped in the next simply because there aren’t enough of you left to fight effectively.
In post ww2 time USSR, supposedly there was something like 67 males to 100 females. It certainly took a huge toll on their demography, but effects of it are felt through decades later, its a cumulative phenomenon.
That’s the point I’ve been making. How many Russians were never born, how many had their lives blighted because they didn’t have fathers around? What are the social effects of all that, and how have they played out over the succeeding generations?
I knew a Russian woman who said she thought that Russian men had been “ruined” by the war, both because of the hardships and privations, and for another reason I never considered: Being as men were so hard to come by for a lot of women, the ones left could get away with anything, and still find a woman to take care of them. Her phrasing was something like “They’re all big babies, never having to grow up properly…” Sons were cherished and spoiled; daughters, not so much. Which carried it all onto the next generations, perpetrated by indulgent mothers and grandmothers who remembered losing their men.
She made a pretty good case for it, and blamed the distortion on so many men being “gone”.
I don’t think these things are sustainable, over the long haul: Examine the social effects of the Roman Republic’s constant grinding down of the rural population, replacing them with slaves on latifundia. Socially, that cost them a lot, and one of the things it cost them was a strong rural yeomanry that could resist the impulses that led to Empire.
Same with France; there are entire regions in France that are still suffering the demographic damages wrought by the Napoleonic wars, coupled with the various idiocies up to 1914-18. You just have to go into some of those still-tiny villages, and see the cenotaphs with hundreds of names on them to understand that.
Few “elite” types grasp this truth, and even fewer bother to take care of their people. The insouciant attitudes on display with many of our so-called “greats” speak for themselves, ringing down the generations that never came into existence because of their search for “glory”.
A pox on all their houses, say I.
Germans used that approach with the Bf109, favoring quantity over quality, and postponing improvements to the Bf109g, because the retooling would have costed a pair of weeks of production, until it was too late and, in 1944, a generation of newbie pilots on fighters prestationally remained at 1942, dropped like flies, fighting better trained pilots on more modern machines.
Quantity over quality works if you can have a wast advantage in quantity. Otherwise you are obliged to favor quality.
There’s a time and a place for both; the trick is knowing which is the way to go at the moment it becomes critical.
People get this crazy idea that things are somehow fixed in time and immutable. They aren’t; it’s a never-ending dance with chaos and the forces of entropy, and you can’t stop the dance or even get off the dance floor. Ever.
interesting that the Chukavin is reported to be appearing in action.
Yet, in September 2024 https://en.topwar.ru/249870-koncern-kalashnikov-naraschivaet-proizvodstvo-snajperskih-vintovok-svd.html
Thanks Daweo,
I’ll probably get myself onto all sorts of watch lists and social credit scores now, for going further and having a good look through the kalashnikov groups English language website
Wasn’t England a free nation at one time? My grandfather should have just stayed home.
“(…)proposals; Dragunov, Konstatinov, and Simonov(…)”
There was another one https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Kalashnikov_sniper_rifle
“(…)Konstantinov was not as accurate as the Dragunov(…)”
http://war-russia.info/index.php/nomenklatura-vooruzhenij/457-sukhoputnye-vojska/strelkovoe-oruzhie/strelkovoe-oruzhie-2/vintovki-karabiny-3/2784-7-62-mm-opytnye-samozaryadnye-snajperskie-vintovki-1958-62g41gg furnish different explanation, both Konstantinov entry (final form, 3rd image from top) and Dragunov entry (1st image from top) were found accurate enough, but Dragunov entry was more reliable and has longer expected life.
There were also 2 design rejected early АО-24 (5th image from top) and ТКБ-579 (8th image from top).
M. T. Kalashnikov revoked his entry (СВК) to focus at RPK developed at same time.
At same time Konstantinov entry was heavier (according to https://military-exotic.blogspot.com/2023/12/1958.html it was around 5 with half kg) than Dragunov (as adopted 3,9 kg), which suggest superiority of 2nd designer, as he made much lighter design which was also more durable.
It’s interesting how the Simonov’s rifle seemed to have retained the same defects of his AVS36. scarce reliability in firing a rimmed cartridge.
The 1960s field manual of the SVD lists a probable error of 54 mm at 300 m. This is equivalent to a standard deviation of 80 mm (or 0.27 mil).
Which lets us expect 90 % of the shots inside a 343 mm (13.5″) circle at 300 m (328 yd).
Note: the above figures were based on the ordinary 9.6 g L bullet.
According to Russian sources (Dvorjanninov), the 7N1 sniper ammunition from SVD could have only about 74 % of the above dispersion, 254 mm (10″).