Rosoboronexport company of the Rostec State Corporation will supply modernized compact 9 mm SR.3M Vikhr assault rifles to a foreign partner. The weapon is developed at the Central Scientific and Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering (TSNIITOCHMASH) of Rostec State Corporation. It comes equipped with a removable silencer, an optical sight and is intended for arming special forces. The modernized compact assault rifle SR.3M is designed to engage targets protected with personal body armor, as well as non-armored vehicles.
“The main feature of the assault rifle is its removable silencer, which allows transforming an assault rifle for short-range combat into a full-fledged sniper rifle in the field, capable of effectively hitting targets at distances of over 300 meters. The reliability and ease-of-use of the weapon, as well as the ability to install special equipment such as night and sniper sights, make our weapons famous and popular all over the world. Rosoboronexport has signed a new supply contract for the SR.3M assault rifles with a foreign partner,” reported the Rostec Weapons cluster.
The modernized version SR.3M is designed with a barrel length of only 136 mm for special SP5 and SP6 9×39 mm cartridges with muzzle velocity of 310 m/s. This makes the weapon compact and convenient in short distance combat, e.g. in dense urban areas. Weight of the assault rifle with a silencer and a magazine for 30 rounds is 3.2 kg. Because the SR-3M is a rather expensive weapon for its small size and weight, it was not mass produced for the Russian military.
The SR-3 Vikhr (Russian for “whirlwind”) is a Russian 9×39mm compact assault rifle. It was developed by A. D. Borisov, V. N. Levchenko and A. Tyshlykov at TsNIITochMash (Central Institute for Precision Machine Building) in the early 1990s and was manufactured in 1994. Heavily based on the AS Val, but lacks an integral suppressor, has a newly designed folding stock and charging handle for ease of concealed carry. The abbreviation “SR” stands for spetsialnaya razrabotka — special development.
