Picture the picture. A special forces sniper lay down in a forest belt near a village, wearing a shaggy “goblin” suit, his face and hands disguised with dark green army makeup. The area around is teeming with enemies, so there is no way for the special forces to give away his location with a loud shot.
How can a shooter complete a mission and leave the firing position without attracting attention? Which rifle will come to the aid of a sniper in this situation? The sniper took the VSK-94 with him on the mission - a reliable and very accurate weapon for silent shooting, and with it the elimination of the target will be guaranteed from the first shot.
History of creation
In 1987, snipers of special forces units received at their disposal the excellent VSS Vintorez sniper rifle. To this day, she is considered one of the best combat friends of the “ghost killers,” especially when it comes to performing missions where high mobility and, above all, the stealth of a fighter are required.
Soviet commanders understood that if a sniper used an SVD, then after firing a shot, even if not immediately, but from the second or third shot he would certainly reveal himself.
In a number of circumstances, such as when performing combat missions in urban environments, this meant that additional manpower had to be allocated to cover the sniper's retreat. Because, since such a specialty appeared, the enemy has not stood on ceremony with accurate snipers in any of the armed clashes of the twentieth century.
In some cases, the chase could last up to several days, and it was very difficult for a well-aimed shooter to escape from an angry enemy. It was impossible to neglect the life of a sniper, and the cover group reduced the chances of remaining unnoticed.
The VSS has made the task of many shooters much easier, effectively hitting targets at a distance of up to 400 meters with the subsonic 9 mm SP-5 cartridge. Vintorez was first used in 1990, when suppressing a riot of prisoners in a prison in the city of Sukhumi.
According to one of the participants in those events, fear was sown in the ranks of the rioters by the understanding that targeted fire was being fired at them, but they could not understand where they were shooting from.
But, despite all the excellent tactical and technical characteristics of this rifle, it remained quite expensive. And the Alpha and Vympel units, SOBR and special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could afford to keep it in their arsenal.
The structural units of law enforcement agencies had to be content with a reliable, but already slowly starting to age, SVD. It is based on this fact that the Tula Instrument Design Bureau in 1992 begins to develop a military sniper complex, which will be cheaper to produce than the already famous VSS, but will not be inferior to it in terms of characteristics.
The developers of TsNIITochMash decided to take the 9A-91 assault rifle, which was being developed in parallel, as a basis. Engineers V. Kulitsky and V. Gryazev designed a model of the VSK-94 rifle, in which, instead of the folding butt of the automatic version, a hard plastic one was used, visually reminiscent of the same one as that of the Vintorez. A muffler (removable) and a mount for installing an optical sight were also added. The mechanical sight was adapted for the sniper, and with its help it was possible to easily fire at a distance of up to 400 meters, in the absence of the possibility of using optics.
Photo VSK-94
VSK-94 rifle and 9A-91 assault rifle
Two sniper rifles for special forces: VSS Vintorez (top) and VSK-94 (bottom)
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Design features
The operating principle of the VSK-94 mechanism is based on the classical removal of powder gases from the barrel bore. The receiver of the military sniper complex is made of chrome-plated steel. The nine-millimeter cartridge is locked in the rifle barrel by turning the bolt, equipped with 4 stops.
The undoubted advantage of the VSK-94 is the ability to conduct both single and automatic fire, without switching the fire switch flag.
This happens thanks to the trigger firing mechanism.
The basic configuration of the military sniper complex includes a silencer. It is a silencer, and not a device for silent shooting, as some people mistakenly assume. Unlike PBS, the VSK-94 muffler cannot be disassembled, although it performs all the same functions.
It is noteworthy that, unlike Vintorez, VSK-94 can fire both with and without a silencer. The survivability of the barrel is 6000 shots, which is a very good indicator for the 9*39 mm caliber cartridge used. Due to the fact that the silencer absorbs the flash after firing a shot, the sniper does not risk being blinded at night.
Firing from the VSK-94 rifle is not absolutely silent. The movement of the metal parts of the sniper complex mechanism can be heard at a distance of 50-80 meters, and at night, in the absence of background ambient sounds, this distance can double.
For shooting with the VSK-94, two types of magazines are provided - 10 and 20 rounds. Subsonic cartridges SP-5, SP-6 and PAB-9 used in shooting have strong stopping and penetrating characteristics. For example, at a distance of 100 m, a bullet can easily pierce a steel sheet 1 centimeter thick.
The PAB-9 was designed specifically for this rifle and is relatively inexpensive to manufacture (compared to the armor-piercing SP-6). At the same time, the cartridge retains excellent penetration qualities. Due to the compactness of the magazine, the shooter can press himself to the ground, thereby improving his camouflage. Also, massive cartridges coupled with the light weight of the VSK-94 give greater recoil, requiring the shooter to have good shooting skills. Despite this, the rifle produces a fairly good accuracy of fire - 7.5 cm at 100 meters.
The initial versions of the VSK-94 rifles, assembled in 1994, were equipped with a standard 4x PSO-1 optical sight.
For ease of work, some snipers installed PSO-1m2 (like VSS). The VSK-94 mechanical sight was completely adopted from the basic model of the 9A-1A assault rifle with one single modification - the sighting bar was increased to a distance of 400 meters. Later, on modified types of VSK-94, the designers of the instrumentation bureau provided brackets for mounting the PKS-07 collimator day sight and the PKN night sight.
PKS-07 weighs significantly less than PSO-1. In addition, the optics here are not so capricious. There are often cases when snipers, crossing through forest thickets or other difficult places, with special care carried a rifle equipped with PSO-1 on the forearm. Because any slight vibration of the weapon would throw off the painstakingly adjusted aim. The PKS-07 sits more firmly on the bracket and is also larger in size than standard Soviet-era military optics.
The collimator optics have a red dot, which significantly reduces the time required to aim if fire needs to be carried out in operational mode. PKS-07 is equipped with a convenient rangefinder that very accurately determines the distance to the target.
The PKN sight operates from autonomous power sources for up to 10 hours without interruption and allows targeted fire at a distance of up to 300 meters.
Have the designers realized the idea of creating a full-fledged analogue of the famous Vintorez, the production of which required lower production costs? Let's look at the actual data:
Flaws
Negative aspects are also present, and we wouldn’t mind them:
- The disproportionate ratio of the mass of the bullet to the mass of the machine gun itself results in strong recoil, which can negatively affect accuracy.
- At night, the clang of a rifle can be heard quite far away if there are no other sources of noise. Not so quiet when compared with the same VSS Vintorez.
- As already mentioned, the bullet is relatively heavy, so you can’t carry much with you. Because of this, the amount of ammunition for the VSK-94 sniper rifle is very limited in combat conditions.
Despite the listed shortcomings, this type of weapon has proven itself quite well and is successfully used by special forces of the internal forces of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Tactical and technical characteristics of silent rifles
| Weapon | VSK-94 | VSS |
| Year of adoption | 1994 | 1987 |
| Caliber | 9*39 | 9*39 mm |
| Weight | 3.5 kg | 3.7 kg. |
| Length | 932 mm | 894 mm. |
| Rate of fire | 700 rounds per minute | 800 rounds per minute |
| Shop | 10 and 20 rounds | 10 and 20 rounds |
| Sighting range | 400 meters | 400 meters |
| Effective range | 300 meters | 250-300 meters |
| Barrel resource | 6000 shots | 5000 shots |
As we can see, the characteristics of both rifles are generally identical, except that in automatic mode the Vintorez shoots a little faster and is a little shorter than the VSK-94. But the VSK-94 requires a later barrel replacement than the VSS, without losing the quality of aimed fire.
In service
The military sniper complex was appreciated by precision shooting specialists from the first days of combat use. It took place during the conduct of hostilities during the first Chechen campaign. A group of militants was successfully eliminated by targeted fire from a pair of federal forces snipers from the VSK-94 during one of the clashes in the spring of 1996.
Currently, the VSK-94 is in service with the Russian Guard and the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Also, a number of copies were purchased for their special operations forces by the armies of Mongolia, Belarus and Syria.
Since the adoption of the military sniper complex, it has undergone few changes and all of them were aimed at adapting mounts for sighting devices. Experimental versions of the VSK-94 were created for 7.62*39 mm, 5.45* 39 mm and NATO 5.56*45 mm cartridges, but these versions were not mass-produced.
VSK-94 first appeared in the computer duology “Alpha Anti-Terror” and “Alpha Anti-Terror: A Man’s Work” released in 2003 and 2004.
VSK-94 can be found in toys for those who like to survive in the vastness of the Stalker universe. In newer games, the military sniper complex can be found in the Survarium series.
