Russian Western District snipers use 1PN140 thermal imaging sights in drills.

Snipers from the Russian Western Military District’s combined-arms army based in the Leningrad Region in northwest Russia have practiced maximum-range live-firing with organic small arms in the daytime and at night during an exercise, the Defense Ministry’s press office said.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

Russian sniper (Picture source: Russian MoD)

“Servicemen of special operations units demonstrated their capability to operate as part of sniper teams, monitor the battlefield, detect and eliminate moving and pop-up/pop-down targets in the daytime and at night in various climatic conditions with the use of 1PN140 thermal imaging sights,” the press office said.

Besides, the servicemen practiced displacing covertly, fortifying and assuming firing positions and returning to the assembly point after fulfilling the mission. The exercise involved more than 100 servicemen.

The thermal sight Shakhin, right side  (Picture source: gunrf.ru)

1PN140 thermal imaging sight

The Shakhin thermal sight was developed and manufactured by Cyclone Central Research Institute, Moscow. Chief Designer: A. E. Sdobnikov. It provides for round-the-clock target detection and recognition, the input of initial firing data and aiming from different types of small arms and hand-held grenade launchers. It is an uncooled passive thermal imaging device that requires no supplementary artificial target illumination sources for its operation. It operates in the spectral range of 8-14 microns, which offers the prospect of aimed firing under conditions when a target is obscured by dust and smoke arising at the battlefield.

It can be installed on all modifications of the Kalashnikov assault rifles, AN-94 Nikonov submachine gun, SVD sniper rifle, РКМ and Pecheneg general-purpose machine guns, as well as on the Kord heavy machine gun. The sight is installed on a weapon with the aid of a special bracket. The sight memory can store ballistic data for four types of weapons (cartridges) simultaneously.

© Copyright 2021 TASS / Army Recognition Group SPRL. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.