We wanted to be as thorough as possible with this unique opportunity. In addition to extensive disassembly and photography, we were also given the opportunity to test fire both the VSS silenced sniper rifle and the VIKHR submachine gun with our meters ready to conduct scientific testing. Two Small Arms Review writers were granted the opportunity to examine in detail both the weapons and the ammunition in the field at a discreet location in Southwest Asia. The system does not use a standard hammer, utilizing the tubular striker instead, and has very little in common with a Kalashnikov other than the appearance of some controls, and the fact that it is gas-operated. It can be broken down into component parts: suppressor, receiver, optic, buttstock, magazine, and packed into a very small space. The VSS weighs 2.6 kg (5.7 lbs) with suppressor, optic, and empty magazine. The exposure of the ported barrel alone would be a dissuader. The VSS is the weapon most readily identified in Georgia, and the system will not operate for more than one round with the suppressor removed as it was not intended for that. The VSS Vintorez is based on the VIKHR, but the receiver has notable differences and they do not interchange. Charles Cutshaw’s excellent book The New World of Russian Small Arms and Ammo does an excellent job and should be on everyone’s bookshelf, but his 1990s treatise is limited to Lyn Haywood’s line drawings for illustration and he was not allowed to disassemble the weapons. Real time, take-it-apart, pull the trigger, hands-on testing has been very rare and certainly not widely reported. There have been some excellent but isolated references on the 9x39mm ammunition and firearms, and Internet resources are limited of course to the writer’s experience with the weapons – usually non-existent other than in computer games. Pandemonium ensued as all resources were called upon to ID this weapon and the threat it represents. Within a short period the Russian military forces brilliantly transitioned into the “Peace-keepers” in the region, and photos leaked out to the Western press and Intel communities showed strange, Dragunov-looking weapons that were clearly too short to be in 7.62x54R caliber, and also very clearly integrally suppressed. When Russian military forces crossed into the northern provinces of Georgia and swiftly cut them off from the south, much of the world recoiled in horror and voiced platitudes about how the Russians must stop this assault. None of these unique weapons have been seen by the general military population other than in isolated news clips, especially from the recent unpleasantness in the former Soviet State of Georgia. Dater uses the modified reticle PSO-1 variant scope to sight-in the 9x39mm VSS integrally suppressed sniper rifle in the Southwest Asian desert in preparation for sound measurement testing.

Vaal silent sniper rifel