Army-2021: Kalashnikov offers to upgrade SVD-63 Dragunov sniper rifle.

The Kalashnikov Group offers to the customers an upgrade of the Dragunov SVD sniper rifle: "We offer a broad complex of solutions to upgrade the SVD platform beginning with sidebars and regulated buttstock up to the Vlasenko chassis that increases the characteristics of the rifle to the modern level," the company said.

Dragunov sniper rifle currently in service with Russian armed forces (Picture source: Russian MoD)

The upgrade can be done in the framework of a service contract. "The chassis is offered bolt-on and in the framework of a service contract that can install the chassis and software to teach independent upgrade to the client," it said. Several hundred thousand SVD rifles are operated in the world. "The platform demands modernization for modern thermal imaging sights and day/night sights," Kalashnikov said.

The "original" Dragunov sniper rifle model (Picture source: Russian MoD)

The Dragunov sniper rifle, officially "Sniper Rifle, System of Dragunov, Model of the Year 1963") (GRAU index 6V1) is a semi-automatic marksman rifle chambered in 7.62×54mmR and developed in the Soviet Union. It was designed as a squad support weapon since, according to Soviet and Soviet-derived military doctrines, long-range engagement ability was lost to ordinary troops when submachine guns and assault rifles (which are optimized for close-range and medium-range, rapid-fire combat) were adopted.

It was developed in 1957–1963 and selected as the winner of a contest that included three competing groups of designers, led by Sergei Simonov, Aleksandr Konstantinov and Yevgeny Dragunov. Extensive field testing of the rifles conducted in a wide range of environmental conditions resulted in Dragunov's proposal being accepted into service in July 1963. An initial pre-production batch consisting of 200 rifles was assembled for evaluation purposes, and from 1964 serial production was carried out by Izhmash, later called Kalashnikov Concern.

Since then, the Dragunov has become the standard squad support weapon of several countries, including those of the former Warsaw Pact. China produced an unlicensed copy of the SVD through reverse-engineered samples captured during the Sino-Vietnamese War as the Type 79 and 85. Iran also produced a clone, the Nakhjir 3, which was a direct copy of the Chinese Type 79.

PSO-1's unique reticle. The rangefinder is in the lower left, chevrons for distances higher than 1km are found in the middle, and stadia marks for windage to the left and right of the center reticule. The reticle is illuminated by a small battery-powered lamp (Picture source: Wikipedia)