Dragunov

[frigate88]

Is the Dragunov a decked out AK with a longer barrel?

[Scharfschuetzer]

It is basically the Kalishnikov action, but it fires the much more powerful 7.62 X 54 Rimmed cartridge. Same round that the Mosin-Nagant and the PK machine gun fires. The barrel length is a good bit longer too at 24 inches.

Power wise it is about the same as the 7.62 NATO. It's scope is about 4X and has an interesting range finding reticle that is very similar to the WW I telescope sight reticle that the US Army used on the 1903 sniper rifles in the trenches of France and is again used as an alternate range finder in the Nightforce scopes on the latest Mk 13 SWS.

[bamaranger]

The SVD or Duraganov is not a big AK. I am far from an expert on the matter, but I am fairly certain that the trigger group and the action/gas system are far different from the AK, and the entire system was intended for accuracy. There is a passing cosmetic similarity, but that is all.

What complicates the issue is that the PSL/Romak-3/ssg-97, now readily available, is frequently marketed as a "Duraganov" is indeed no more than a big AK. And the PSL bears an even greater resemblance to the SVD. But, mags will not interchange, mag well placement is different, the forearm and butt stocks are different and again the trigger group/action-gas system is vastly different. The PSL and the SVD do share the same cartridge, the 7.62x54R.

We should hear more from others. The big AK sites address these issues pretty clearly.

[raftman]

It is basically the Kalishnikov action, but it fires the much more powerful 7.62 X 54 Rimmed cartridge. Same round that the Mosin-Nagant and the PK machine gun fires. The barrel length is a good bit longer too at 24 inches.

Don't mean to be mean but that's completely wrong. The action and gas system of the Dragunov and Kalashnikov are completely different. They look alike to the untrained eye, but that is where the similarities end.

As has been pointed out, there are Eastern European rifles of the same class that are in fact just scaled up AK's, the Romanian PSL and Yugoslavian M76 being prime examples, these are often mistakenly called Dragunov rifles.

[Aaron1100us]

Saw a rifle listed for sale online once that said it was a Dragunov. Something like $16,000. Sure would be cool to own a real one.

Sent from my PB99400 using Tapatalk

[tahunua001]

they look similar but in reality that's about it.

[Scharfschuetzer]

We shoot them a bit at work from time to time and once the "cool" factor has worn off, it's back to what we know best.

I've never noticed the accuracy from them that is claimed for them, but then we usually only get 7.62X54R ball to shoot out them. Might be fun to try a handloading project with one and the .311 SMK bullet, but that probably won't happed for me. It would be interesting to get an honest evaluation from someone who has done that.

The scope is a very usable piece of equipment, but for our shooters it seems a bit challenged after getting accostomed to the Leuopold M3 and Nightforce scopes. Still, for a battlefield weapon I think the SVD is a usable option and with its repeat fire capability has some advantages over our bolt action systems. I sure wouldn't turn one down if given one.

Take down and maintenance is pretty much like the AK. Probably a good idea for a conscript army or for extreme climates in the field.

[USMCGrunt]

As already been said, the Romanian PSL and Yugo M76 are generally just beefed up to handle the 7.62X54R and 8mm rounds respectively. The true SVD (aka Druganov) is an entirely different creature although it looks like they might be related. With an AK, you have a long recoil design where the piston is part of the bolt carrier whereas an SVD is a short recoil design where the piston is seperate from the carrrier and doesn't involve the extra weight moving back and forth. Both the PSL and I believe the M76 use standard AK fire control groups but the SVD is entirely different and is easily removable from the receiver. This is what also gives you a far better 2-stage trigger that the others lack.
As far as the SVD itself goes, some are so-so in the accuracy department while others are pretty good. We had one captured SVD at the Special Ops school that my old NCOIC thought couldn't hit anything so we never fired it for demonstrations. However, during down time, I took it out to work with it and was able to get 2" groups at 200 meters so IMHO, that one did shoot pretty well. I also have a Chinese NDM-86 in 7.62 NATO I got years ago. When I first got it, I wasn't hoping for great accuracy but was quite surprised when Federal Gold Medal Match was giving me 3/4" groups at 100 meters! Because of the floating firing pin, I tend to not shoot commercial ammo in it after I found out about potential slam fire problems with the softer primers and because of having to move a lot over the last several years, I haven't had a chance to develop any match grade loads for it using harder CCI #34 military primers but the day I get settled down in one spot for a long time, I plan on trying to brew up some decent loads for it that will give me performance to the Federal match grade ammo yet include a harder, safer primer.
Here's my NDM-86 in a very unatttractive picture. Sorry, not very artistic.

[Gunplummer]

The WWII version is a piece of junk that you would be better off feeding by hand, if it is the same thing. It has a fluted chamber that destroys the case if it is brass and you could not hit the barn or the farm house. I don't know, is that the same design you are talking about? I would not pay thousands of dollars for one if it was Stalin's personal rifle.

[USMCGrunt]

The WWII version is a piece of junk that you would be better off feeding by hand, if it is the same thing. It has a fluted chamber that destroys the case if it is brass and you could not hit the barn or the farm house. I don't know, is that the same design you are talking about? I would not pay thousands of dollars for one if it was Stalin's personal rifle.

Huh??? Uh, I'm not sure if you know what we're talking about here but the SVD goes back to 1963, not WWII. Also, no SVD, PSL or M76 has a fluted chamber. Did you reply to the wrong topic? Not trying to be a jerk here but your post makes no sense to me.

[Scharfschuetzer]

Might mean the German G3 and G33 rifles from the Cold War. They had fluted chambers to allow a little of the high pressure gas from firing in and around the case to cushen their somewhat violent action and extraction due to the roller locking system that they used.

Saw them quite a bit in the 80s down in Central America and once in South Asia.

[nimbleVagrant]

Maybe he's thinking of the SVT-40 rifle. Though I don't think they have a fluted chamber.

[raftman]

Saw a rifle listed for sale online once that said it was a Dragunov. Something like $16,000. Sure would be cool to own a real one.

Dragunov's tend to fetch a high price because the importation of them has been halted, but $16,000 is several times more than what they typically got for!

Take down and maintenance is pretty much like the AK. Probably a good idea for a conscript army or for extreme climates in the field.

No, not really... unless you use "pretty much like the AK" so loosely that it could apply to most semi-automatic rifles.

[Famas]

Interesting discussion. The stories of varied accuracy of the Dragunov it's variation seem to conform to what I have witnessed in Bosnia. Quite often, whether it was fighting in and around cities like Sarajevo and Mostar, we would witness groups of Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats going to and returning from the front. Some would carry the Dragunov or whatever variant they had. It appears to have been suitable for the urban fighting they were engaged it.....apartment to apartment, house to house, etc. We never saw the Dragunov in the rural/countrysides. All telescoped rifles in those areas were almost all exclusively bolt-actions (we did see both telescoped Mosins and K98s, or the yugo version if it).

We were forbidden to speak with these soldiers for their opinions of this weapon as we were curious ourselves, but from our observation the rifle appeared suitable for accurately engaging targets of 200-250m. Beyond that distance other weapons were generally used.

[alloy]

Completely different rifles and actions altho maybe the bolt and carrier is kind of similar. The piston setup however is not even close. This one seems to shoot as well as USMCGrunt's, but mag availability and spare parts are like hunting snipe.
Accuracy rejection spec for a russian SVD from wiki...
"1.04 MOA extreme vertical spread with 320 mm twist rate barrels. The extreme vertical spreads for the SVD are established by shooting 5-shot groups at 300 m range."
Don't know how that compares to similar American systems but at just under 8lbs scoped it could be worse, and actual cost is likely far less.

[BigG]

The SVD action has a short stroke piston with a long thin operating rod while the AK has a piston and bolt carrier all in one that reciprocates together. Quite different.

[raftman]

The guy may be some kind of phony; to say the SVD and AK are essentially the same gun in different calibers would be akin to saying the AK and M-16A1 are essentially the same gun in different calibers.

[alloy]

The guy may be some kind of phony

I'd go with the benefit of the doubt because I've heard people with PSL rifles call them Dragunovs at the firing range.
On forums, I've seen people make claims only to then have it come out they are really talking about some type of PSL rifle.
As with anything there's alot of disinformation out there, and maybe fewer that care to discourage it.

[Gunplummer]

Yeah, not the same gun they used in WWII. Never messed with one of those.

[Nickel Plated]

one issue i see is people seem to always expect sniper rifle accuracy out of a Dragunov. The SVD is not a sniper's rifle and is not meant to be one. In the Russian and Soviet militaries it is primarily used as a DMR by a member of a regular infantry squad to extend the squad's range. So when comparing it to other western guns, keep that in mind. Putting it up against proper sniper rifles like Remington 700s is comparing apples to oranges. An M14 or AR-10 would make a more fair comparison. Russian snipers use more specialized bolt-actions.

[Scharfschuetzer]

My comments regarding the Dragunov I think are valid. It is obviously not an AK and has different component designs in areas like the gas piston and trigger assembly as a few of you have pointed out. It's longer barrel and calibre are obvious to anyone, but it is as AKish as the M-4 is M-16inish.

Let's look at the commonalites though. To me there is an inate similarity and if one is trained on the AK, he won't find operating the SVD or its Romanian and other counterparts any mystery.

This is what I refer to.

Loading, unloading and placing into action
Bolt carrier and bolt
Dust cover
Magazine latch and operation
Safety location and basic operation
Reciever layout
Bore allignment to shooter and receiver
Pistol grip and trigger location
Iron sights or back up sights

If you wish to delve into the details, fine, but do not disparage the obvious. I shot my first AK-47 in VN and have shot the various versions of the Dragunov off and on when they became avalable to us in the late 80s along with the AKM and AK-74.

While most readers of this thread are familiar with the Kalishnikov series of weapons, here are a few schematics of the SVD to show the similarities of it and the basic AK design.







For those with AKs or AKMs, please compare my notes above to those parts in the SVD. I think that most will agree that the SVD is much more akin to the AK/AKM than the AK is to the M-16, not only by design, but by function.

Now bear with me one more minute and let me substantiate my argument further.

The M-14 evolved from John Garand's M1 and the Ruger Mini 14 evolved from the M-14. Even the lowly M1/M2 carbines share many engeneering features with the M1 Garand even though they don't share the same trigger assembly, method of securing to the stock or gas piston arrangement. Kind of the same dissimilarities between the SVD v. AK.

Who brought up the M-16 a few posts above? I don't think anyone will argue that the AR-15, M-16A1, the XM-177, the Car 15, the M-16A2 and A4 as well as our current M-4 and M-4A1 are all evolutions of the original AR-10 chambered for the 7.62 cartridge. Who would say that the M-4 does not owe its heritage to the original AR-10? Not me and to say that it is more akin to the SVD is just simply wrong.

To further bore you, the 1863 rifled musket became the 1868 50/70 Trapdoor breechloader and that was updated through the following models: 1870, 1873 (now in 45/70), 1873 with 1879 mods, 1884 and finally the 1888 ramrod baynet rifle. There were several versions of carbines and cadet rifles that all evolved from the original Springfield 1863 which itself had evolved through several iterations of smoth bore muskets and rifled muskets.

Where I'm going here is that weapons evolve to meet new requirements and or military doctrine. The SVD has done this also and it came via the path of the AK-47, the AKM and the AK-74. The doctrine of an infantry support rifle, mentioned by Chrome Plated in the post above this, is the reason for the SVD and why it evolved as it did. It is very AKish like it or not.

Sorry it took so long to say all of the above, but let me finally conclude that casting dispersions about really does nothing for your argument. It's been, overal, a great thread about an unusual and still pretty rare rifle. Why not we keep it that way?

[raftman]

If we're to be honest, the padded list is now making it a nebulous "well they have some similarities" argument, it doesn't make the statement of "it's basically the same action scaled to a different round" or that "take down is essentially the same" any more true. That all simply remains untrue.

Loading, unloading and placing into action

There are countless auto and semi-auto rifles that load the, unload, and chamber a round in the same way. They are far from all being essentially the same action or taking down the same way.

Bolt carrier and bolt

There's similarities between the AK bolt and bolt carrier and the bolt/carrier of the M1 Garand, the AK bolt/carrier is in fact usually considered to be based on that of the Garand. It still cannot be said that they're essentially the same gun scaled to a different round, or that take down is essentially the same.

Dust cover

Yes, they both have a dust cover, as do other rifles. It's not secured in the same way. Nothing to do with the action or take-down being the same.

Magazine latch and operation

Common to other firearms as well, and again does nothing to establish that the action and take down are at all similar.

Safety location and basic operation

Just like every pistol slide-mounted decocker safety is the same as a Walther PPK and comes apart the same way?

So on and so forth down the entire list, none of it means that the action is the same or that take down is the same. For example... what does having similar iron sights have to do with the action? The Mosin had essentially the exact same layout as far as sights go... is one to argue the Mosin, AK, and SVD are all same action and come apart the same way?

Maybe comparing it to the M-16 was a bit of a hyperbole, the Vz.58 - AK comparison would be more apt. They look an awful lot alike, the untrained eye wouldn't even know the difference, and at a distance even a trained eye may have difficulty in distinguishing the two. Same class of weapon, operated in very much the same way, very similar sights, even same caliber. But not a single part interchanges between the two, take-down is nothing alike unless you over-generalize, different layout of the FCG, and the actions are for the most part very dissimilar. It simply cannot be said that it's the same action despite some of the superficial similarities that exist.

[Scharfschuetzer]

It looks like we are going to beat this horse until it is dead! I'm sure that everyone is getting pretty bored with it, but let me amplify my claim one more time.

While I pefer to speak from experience, you are having none of that, so I got out one of my old firearms books that used to be a required text for the SF light weapons course (18B) at Fort Bragg, NC. Did you attend? At one time there were two SF companies from the old 11th SF Group in Oregon and perhaps you were in one of them. They disbanded around 1994, so perhaps not.

In any event, the text is "Small Arms of the World." by the noted firearms authority Edward Ezell. I'm looking at the 12th edition published in 1983. I don't know if it is still available in book stores, but one should be able to find it at Amazon.com. For any military user or soldier working in the Third World, it is a valuable book as most of what you run across in those latitudes and climes is usually covered in this tome. From Mauser 98s, Lee Enfields to Soviet PK machine guns, it's all there with the exception of anything produced after its publishing date.

At any rate, in the chapter on Soviet small arms (Chapter 46) on page 713 you'll find this sentence in the introduction to the SVD:

"The Dragunov uses an action which closely resembles that of the AK."

In the paragraph on "How the SVD Works" you'll find this statement:

"The bolt operation of the SVD is essentially the same as that of the AK/AKM in semiautomatic fire."

It does go on to say (as you noted previously) that the SVD has a spring-loaded piston rod, which is a seperate assembly and then describes the differences between its trigger and that of the AK/AKM.

It then goes on to describe the take down of the SVM as similar to the AK/AKM.

Speaking of the seperate op rod, in the much more detailed "The AK47 Story-Evolution of the Kalashnikov Weapons" in Chapter 6: "Design Evolution of Weapons Based on the Kalashnikov Avtomat, 1958-1985," I found an interesting reference to the "why" of the seperate op rod. I found this interesting and I thought that the readers here might also; so I quote:

"In the long-stroke piston systems used with the earlier Kalashnikov designs, the operating rod assembly was rather heavy, When scaled up to the size necessary for the 7.62 X 54mmR cartridge, the operating rod was very heavy and tended to upset the center of gravity balance when it reciprocated during shooting."

I'm not a big fan of quoting people and books, but it seems apropos for one final passage from the book from page 214:

A close look at both weapons in the accompanying photographs clearly indicates the debt of the designer to the work of Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov.

I again invite you to look at those points I mentioned in my previous post and then compare what those parts look like in the schematics as well as USMCGrunt's nice photo and compare them to the SVD's progenitor, the AK. The AK may be a bit ugly, but the family resemblance in the looks and operation of the swelt SVD is there for any but the most myopic eye. Try to look at the big picture as my initial post was intended and don't get bogged down in the minutia of seperate components just for the sake of an argument or ego.

If you can provide a solid argument against the obvious, perhaps you should try and change what has been written numerous times by men smarter than you or I as well as get military lesson plans adjusted to your point of view.

As you are in Oregon, you're not far from Fort Lewis and if you'd like, come on up to the base and we can go shoot at the MWR range 15 on a weekend. Bring some coffee, lunch and your SVD and I'll bring my 91/30 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle for fun. You're probably not in the military (retiree, active duty or reserves), but I can get you on as a civilian guest under my sponsorship for the day. Of course you may have to eat your "phony" comment.

[raftman]

I think this has become far more complicated than it needs to be and has become more subjective than it needs to be. The original poster asked a relatively simple question, basically whether or not the Dragunov is nothing more than a scoped AK with a longer barrel. I think the honest answer, in light of all the differences that exist, is no. It's not that no similarities whatsoever exist, but there's not enough to say they're simply the same thing in different dimensions.

For example, just like there obviously are a number of similarities between between the Colt 1911 and the Browning Hi-Power, and definitely a common origin, but no one really says the BHP is just a 1911 with a double-stack magazine.

Here's kind of a "thought experiment," suppose someone were quite familiar with the AKM, but had never even heard of the SVD before. If you were to hand such a person an SVD, would they immediately be able to field strip it without first being shown how? Most likely not. They may eventually be able to figure out through closely examining the weapon, and using trial and error. If you were to hand such a person a PSL or a M76, then there would be no problem.

"In the long-stroke piston systems used with the earlier Kalashnikov designs, the operating rod assembly was rather heavy, When scaled up to the size necessary for the 7.62 X 54mmR cartridge, the operating rod was very heavy and tended to upset the center of gravity balance when it reciprocated during shooting."

This is an interesting tidbit, but doesn't this go to show the book can be wrong? There are quite a few rifles out there that are genuinely just AK's scaled to larger rifle cartridges, including 7.62x54R, 8mm Mauser, .308/7.62x51, and even .30-06, some of these are even designed and made by the Russians themselves.

As you are in Oregon, you're not far from Fort Lewis and if you'd like, come on up to the base and we can go shoot at the MWR range 15 on a weekend. Bring some coffee, lunch and your SVD and I'll bring my 91/30 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle for fun. You're probably not in the military (retiree, active duty or reserves), but I can get you on as a civilian guest under my sponsorship for the day. Of course you may have to eat your "phony" comment.

I will admit that I was hasty in affixing a negative label, it's just that the post seemed at first glance to portray an insufficiently nuanced interpretation of the subject for someone of that background. Either way, I appreciate the invite but that's a 200+ mile drive (besides I already own a sniper 91/30 of my own!)