THE SVD, DRAGUNOV. Russia's sniper rifle plus Combat accuracy test.

so [Applause] [Music] sukkah plant if you've ever used the svd in a video game go ahead and hit that subscribe button guys like and comment comment section that control get in there find out what is the most lawless place on the internet guys a big thank you to our sponsor brownells they rock of course we have a couple other sponsors of this particular video with elias concealment with discount code grantham and of course leatherback gear and hero coffee go check them out ladies gentlemen my often forgotten but most certainly not by me pso optics welcome to the channel today we're going to be talking about a very interesting rifle and that is going to be the dragon off the svd or in the case of this right here we have a import from b west in 1993. i feel like forgotten weapons right now this was imported in 1993. uh this is a russian tire made at the izmash factory and for all intensive purposes except for the barrel and the gas regulator we have the same weapon without having getting our hands on an actual military weapon this about this is about as close as we can get so let's go ahead let's talk about this rifle and uh let's get into it so to start off with what makes the dragon off so interesting is that you have to realize that it was a very forward thinking design for its time and the reason for that was essentially russia pioneered the designated marksman roll or the designated marksman rifle because although the translation for the sv does include sniper the fcd the dragon off really is not a sniper rifle it is much closer to a marksman's rifle and what that means is that you have a member of their platoon of that squad and what they're doing is they are simply extending the engagement range of that platoon much like a machine gun would but with much less ammunition in fact many people have talked about who served in afghanistan of the russian type uh how good it was to have maybe two members with an sed looking over a mountain pass as they were able to hold off a large amount of fighters so it certainly proved itself and on top of that the united states military began pioneering the dmr role more than likely due to a lot of the success seen by other countries especially with the svd and so the thing you have to realize about the designer of the svd is that he himself was a target shooter he was a shooter we're not forgotten weapons we're not going to get into the history the point of this channel is how is it from a shooter's perspective with a little bit of ian mccollum dashed in there so we're going to do what we always do we're gonna go tip to butt and of course my full disclosure i have no relationship with his match who made the weapon all right let's get into it so mike if you want to come in here and take a closer look starting with the flash hider um very elegant very simple very beautiful design and this is perhaps one of the first places that i can talk about where we have the tiger where it differentiates from the svd and that's that look at that barrel length that's quite short compared to the scd now when it comes to our flash hider right here compared to a lot of western flash hiders this is very much so uh in every direction what that means is when you're firing closer to the ground you're gonna have a lot more dust kicked up compared to a lot of the western counterparts parts you saw where the bottom would be closed off and there's a lot of thoughts to that basically you do have very very good flash suppression with the svd and that also has to do with the barrel length as well now coming to that barrel length like we just mentioned the barrels on the svd on the drug enough offer about 24 inches now on the tiger we have a 22 inch barrel so here's what's interesting about it is when the dragon off was made for military service they required that 24 inch barrel they wanted all that propellant burned to ensure we got the maximum amount of velocity however due to weight requirements set by the russian military because just like every other military there is always a stupid you know requirement that doesn't quite fit in with how a rifle should be designed it had to be a certain weight of course and a thicker barrel that would have been better was not feasible due to the amount of weight that it would added so one place that they saved weight was in the barrel profile so on the dragon off you can certainly see that it is a thin barrel and that goes to the tiger as well you can see how thin this barrel is and so that means that the barrel does heat up faster but in the dmr role as we found out when we went out to the range with this it did do quite well now what's interesting is when you go to a 22-inch barrel in fact modernize uh modernizations of of the svd of the dragon off did end up short in the barrel and of course thickening as well you want that thick barrel um ended up having much better barrel harmonics in that very light very uh long barrel that the original scd had they went to a chode more like but in any case when it comes to the tiger i found that the tiger to be a more accurate weapon than what we've seen of the scd and tests and that's probably due to barrel harmonics now we're gonna come take another look here we do have our front sight post up here now ours did break unfortunately and it's coming off hence we have a duct tape so duct tape solves all there is no problem with the front sight um this is not like a design flaw or anything like that in fact it i just break things so my bad there there's no problem front sight they're awesome as you can see this is a bayonet lug and in fact the original svd as it was made in the 60s was made to accept a bayonet and the reason for that was the idea was that this was still a member of a squad and bayonet charges were still a thing and they have been for a while my marines know something about that including my royal commandos um the point was is the guy who had the dragon off who had the svd he still had to be able to mount a bayonet and charge for the glory of the soviet union so we saw the bayonet the problem was as you guys know who do long range that adding weight out to the end of the barrel ended up causing some problems when it came to those barrel harmonics so in later versions the bayonet lug was removed now here's our final place on the tiger where it differentiates from the military drugging off so mike if you want to come take a close look at this right here we have the gas system so specifically the gas system on the drug enough is actually not an aka gas system it is a short stroke gas piston system compared to the very long stroke of the typical ak ak-74 ak-100 series so when it comes to this right here you can see this area there is on the military model an adjustable system from normal and it will go to adverse and that is actuated by using the rim of a 7.62 by 54r cartridge as you can see right here this is the ammunition used by the scd very similar in many ways to many other uh you know cartridges used on these types of rifles so for example the 308 is a very close in many ways to the 7.62 by 54r and one thing that we can say about the 54r is there are certainly problems with the round but it is i believe the longest serving cartridge to be still be fielded in military service i said that pretty [ __ ] but hopefully you got it it is very interesting so anyhow on the adjustable gas system you can use that rim to push that over over to adverse condition and the idea being that as the temperature got cooler extremely cold like we're talking siberia cold that you could slop that over ensure that the weapon could power through everything or if you got it muddy if they got you know significantly dirty in whatever battlefield conditions that it would be able to perform uh despite all that crud on the system so that is something that will likely add to this but for now we're just we have it as is now moving back from there we could see the sights now i said i wouldn't go into the history too much and i won't but it's very interesting because the sights right here got to 1200 meters and they are very basic ak like sights when the dragon op was originally conceived it was a much better much longer sighting system however the russian military insisted upon a more ak-like system and we have what we have here so it is certainly adequate you can see i ran some build drills with it the weapon is actually with a short stroke gas piston system quite light when it comes to the recoil so it has been a real pleasure to shoot it now going back from there we have a lot going on so let's go ahead and talk about it i want to start with a very important part on the scd and that is a magazine if there's one thing that can be said about the dragon off or any weapon in 7.62 by 544r it's that it's difficult to design a magazine that can feed this round well so there was actually some help given to get this magazine designed well but as you can see and as we know from history the scd magazine has indeed performed very well and these are known to be very reliable very well performing magazines so you can see how odd it looks and that's due to both the rimmed cartridge on the 54r as well as the very unique taper that these rounds have but with all that being said it does perform very well now one thing that has really taken me a lot of time to get better at is locking this magazine in to the scd so it is much like an ak where you have the nub right here and it does lock in but again i got it right because i've been shooting this a lot but it it's definitely kind of a different feel from your typical ak like um you know rocking position so for those of you who are running the scd for the first time you'll probably [ __ ] it up a few times but uh it's definitely a little bit odd but again the latch mechanism used by the ak and the scd are incredibly incredibly reliable in cold conditions which russia does get very cold so it makes sense that they used it in there now when it comes to the bolt right here we can see we have a very ak-like system and what's a little bit different from the typical ak system as you can see right there it does lock back on an empty magazine now once that is locked back you can simply put in a fresh magazine with rounds in there and then you can simply pull back on the charging candle in order to load the weapon so that is definitely an improvement in many ways to the original ak design nothing to look at too as a safety is very ak-like now that being said compared to like an ak you simply can't when you're on the weapon reach up and simply disengage it so if you need to disengage the safety you actually kind of have to break your hand off fire control and it is very stiff on the scd and then put it down and then you'll be able to fire at that point so that's a little bit different from your typical ak system now if we roll over to the left side what we can take a look at here is the optic mounting system now i find it very interesting the optics we'll talk about them more once we get out to the range and we fly out and mike lilly makes fun of me because i can't shoot past five yards but um the optics um when they were designed back in the day were of course using an offset position as you can see right here so they are offset from being center lined with the scd and that's fine because that also allowed an operator to then view through the iron sights at the same time so if this optic went down they have their backups what we're gonna do what we always do is we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna go set trigger so for the first time on grand thumb we're gonna come over we're gonna go set trigger together and have a good time all right so so we about a lot of play right there again ak's have gotten better and i'm sure the svd has gotten better but this is a older svd so feeling into it you got that three millimeters of play two three about a four pound let off there that actually does feel pretty good let me try that one more time yeah about four pounds okay let's go ahead let's feel that reset right there reset is two three maybe four ish millimeters long but not a bad let off obviously modern weapons and modern aks have better triggers and i'm sure a modern scd has a much better trigger but for a weapon of the 60s and 70s this is a pretty dang good design now a couple things to note here furniture wood on the sky because we wanted the classic svd look but the more modern furniture used on the svd is of course polymer because it doesn't swell in the rain and there is of course a lot of that around the world now when it comes to the grip the grip angle is actually fine to me the the weapon feels good for precision shooting and everything i really don't have a lot of qualms about this particular stock now it should be noted that there have been a lot of advancements when it comes to these stock designs but i really don't have a whole lot of problem with this now the cheek riser has been a real [ __ ] for us uh continually coming loose no matter what we do so we do have that [ __ ] duct taped down because that's the way we run it here and then of course we have our sling the metal butt plate here is not ideal it does work and one thing that you can say about the svd is when you're firing it and kind of an urban condition it is fine when you're standing when you are proned the scd does kick a little bit more than you'd expect from a weapon of its caliber but that's more than likely due to the fact that they wanted the weapon a little bit over gassed to ensure that would run through everything so we've talked enough about this guys talk is cheap ammunition is not so we're going to go ahead and literally helo out to the mountains and fire this thing in about 500 meters and test it out so [Music] so we're out here uh in the beautiful pacific northwest and we're going to be doing a little bit of longer shooting the svd um i don't know how you guys get to the range yourselves i guess we helo in now i guess we're at that that's what we're at that point now so right out there you can kind of see it we've got uh our target at about what mic uh so we got a target out at 100 yards just to establish zero and then what we're gonna do is we put a c-type target out at 485 yards that's a good distance right there so with the with the svd guys for the soviet sniper it was one shot you had to be able to make one shot get a good hit on an e type target at 500. one shot got it i think doable it is the c type is just a little bit smaller a little more challenging but i think we'll be alright i think we'll be okay i think now with the headshot it had to be two shots they're able to do it in so we're gonna see if we are uh soviet sniper material probably not but it's probably not now as far as the ammunition we're using uh we've got some s b ammo right here and we want to thank robski for pointing this out to us but this is apparently quite good so we'll be using this today 174 grains and just the svd really likes it so we're gonna go ahead we're gonna get set up because talk is cheap all right mike so we're at 385 yards uh we got a little bit of a left to right probably 10 miles an hour looking at my just feel eight to ten okay uh i want you to put the the base of the chevron on his left shoulder or our left his right shoulder his right shoulder his right like if you yeah i see it i got it our left his right okay all right i'm up oh just off the left take a little bit of the wind out and and send it impact got it impact impact yeah it looks like my shots are a little low yeah but i mean it's in the heart of the target remember it's a sea zone good point all right one sec here there you go you know what not bad not bad let's step it out a little bit okay she does all right 505 yards let's give it a go impact upper left shoulder upper left kick so come down just just a tip just a little bit and then right just a touch impact that hit the other shoulder so i think you're starting to approach kind of the limits of the accuracy of that round yeah all right send it again impact hey mike i'm a soviet sniper now man okay so that's pretty uh i fired a lot of gas guns um at some distance you know from the lmt to knights and yours of course and uh i think the limitation is definitely won the optic yeah i i do think the side mount adds a lot of flexion into everything going on and it's offset so it's not ideal um and then in addition to that i just i think it's hard to find really well loaded 7.62 by 54 rimmed like in america it it's not like they produce match-grade ammunition for this rifle setup and i think that it's important that people understand the thought process of the soviet union and what this weapon was intended for it was intended just to give the average infantry guy just a little bit more range it's not a true sniper weapon yeah it's more of a dmr um to bridge that gap between you know 300 meters you know ak range out to about 500 meters and we did prove that it's capable out to that distance 100 um but that c zone we're starting to see you know you're with the same hold you're hitting the left side of the target the right side of the target it's just kind of approaching the limitations of the accuracy that round especially in these environmental conditions i agree i think one cool thing to note too is that you know the 60s the soviets came up and they're like you know i think this would be a good concept this this idea of this sniper or not excuse me this dmr that can kind of bridge the gap between a true sniper and a infantryman they really did pioneer the dmr role yes like something that's very common in u.s infantry nowadays was pioneered by them all the way back in the 60s before it was really a thing i think that is one thing that you have to give them with this rifle is like from the ground up this is the purpose it was designed for yeah especially and especially when i look at it in terms of this was designed in the 60s there was nothing really like it like we had the m14 we had the m21 but the m21 took a little bit more development and it was yeah it was kind of there kind of not there so this is a pretty cool system when you think about it yeah i mean it's it's doing whatever it is trying to do yeah it's doing what it was designed to do and i think we have to look at it from that lens and not look at it from the lens we're in now because obviously there's much better tools for the job all right your spotter's up looking at your grass you got just a touch of left or right down there mike it's mostly from behind us that might help me with my left shoulder impacts just off the left high over his left shoulder high over his left shoulder yeah okay got it over his right shoulder no [ __ ] impact right in his throat impact same spot low and left just caught just caught the edge of him low and left off the left impact center mass impact blood very low impact that's a good shot dead center not bad man good one to end on thanks man looks we had one miss there yep okay it's not bad so i kind of there's more than just you know there's me as well so i've kind of figured this out so between the first and second chevron i'm pretty much holding right dead center between those two and i'm finding them getting pretty good impact so the only problem that i'm running into is i'm you know the the reticle is good and bad it's good in the fact that it's easy to arrange targets with it like the russians did do that really well but there's a lot of kind of guess work right in there it's definitely more art than science at this point so i think it's important that your viewer understands and you know maybe you can get a diagram of the reticle up and yeah we'll pop it up for sure you're not using a traditional crosshair or even a chevron you're just kind of picking a point in space and holding with a blank you know no reference point there so it's very different to make you know um it's not like a loophole or a night force where i've got like very precise right like you can you can give me an adjustment and i know precisely what i'm do well i don't really know what i'm doing but i have a better idea well that's kind of the way the soviet union did things back then it wasn't really like everything's precise and you know very fine everything's kind of rough and built for kind of just general purpose use which is what this is designed for to hit large man-sized targets at between three and 500. i will say so we are hitting reduced sized um c-zone so we're hitting a pretty small target right not super small but smaller um this is definitely a minute of demand like a lot of those shots that were near misses off the shoulder wouldn't have been impacts on the e-type target um so like this is an effective rifle and i i will say using the six power i do kind of i think with the four power it's definitely doable it's not like when i was hearing like what they needed to do to be able to pass i'm like and it seems pretty tough but i think with the pso reticle it would have been with the pso optic i think it would have been very doable but it kind of gives you a little bit of respect for the people pulling off those types of shots back in the 60s you know yeah like you will hit these targets and these like sheena's nailing it i know it's cool it's cool to think about it especially with the ammunition that they had back then which was like at the beginning just lps ball which was like a five moa round all right buddy i am your spotter is up so between that first and second chevron yeah about middle between there your elevation your winded should be dead on you have a slight left to right dude i really wish you could show your viewers what you're holding here dude i know so just between those two and uh hold dead center you should be as far as your windage is concerned all right are you up yup send it impact i should just stop there low left i would say do your same hold man you should be good great shot by the way impact dead center hey so this is like sword in the stone where i loosened it good job buddy all right here we go yeah can't get behind the gun yeah it's weird impact uh about upper thoracic i mean three for three i should probably just stop you're gonna go i did ten you're doing ten all right this is your gig long range [ __ ] i only shoot at five yards brother having trouble getting shouldered behind the gun yeah i have the same trouble man low left but impact impact low left yeah i mean you got like four more rounds brother i know what do you what do you think so i feel like the rifle and the ammunition are capable i think if anything the limitation is the optic i mean what i'm doing there is i've got you know a chevron a couple inches above the target and a chevron a couple inches below the target and it's just you know empty space and we're just guessing the land of make-believe yeah exactly so it's it's pretty tough to shoot i wish there was a way we could you know film through the optics so people could see what we see but you wish that i would have put the nice mount on it with a loophole yeah exactly um it's interesting to shoot yeah uh i feel like it you know it does what it was designed to do back in the 60s 100 percent we're still making pretty consistent impacts at about 500 here yeah it's not bad no not at all you ready to keep taking all right mike you got what five more shots yeah something like that i'm sure the viewers are counting and they're going to correct me all right spotter's on all right safety coming off you you thought that was an ergonomic safety you were wrong my friend that is the takedown lever you want to make sure that's clicked into place there we go details details details details my friend all right impact low left impact left low low windage is good impact low left oh bottom left but you still got it buddy that's it yeah you know what's funny to me about this mic so i missed one yeah that was awesome dude what's funny to me about this is that like it's a thin barrel we're shooting this pretty hard right now it's pretty warm it's pretty warm but uh it is still uh more than capable of hitting a man-sized target at 500 through multiple rounds you know and that's something you have to say about the design is sure it's gonna you know compared to modern designs there's something to be lacking but not bad not bad i'm i'm actually a little surprised i did not think it would shoot as well as it does um having shot it now and tested it in real world conditions i really do feel like if you had a better optic system you could exploit the accuracy potential the the weapon it's it's super hard to just hold in space and to get impacts even though we were doing it um i'm i'm actually eating a little crow because i did not think this would shoot this way i know well so here's the only thing so so far with my shots you're a better long-range shooter than me mike i haven't been able to fire and watch my vapor trail um you know like modern guns gas guns i can fire and watch my vapor trail you know the entire i can see my impact at this i'm always off readjusting is it the same way for you yeah i was absolutely in the first two shots especially i wasn't completely behind the rifle just because of the terrain and where it was and i mean it's got a decent amount of recoil for what it is it is an over gas weapon yeah which for it has a purpose to that of course you know it does power through a lot of crud but over gas yeah i i did not see my impacts either the last few i was able to see my impacts um but i wasn't like watching trace or anything yeah and i wonder if that's because we're on a six power optic as opposed to using the four power pso yeah maybe you know that might be it as well i certainly would be easier um to get back onto target the 4x but i mean when you boil it all down uh it's just cool it is cool and that's that's why we're here because it's cool all right micah we're gonna be having you fire next brother you ready yep um really interesting rifle uh do you think you're gonna get a first shot impact i'm capable of hitting the target are you capable of holding the camera properly no oh okay i'll give it to the other mic is that is this the whole thing where you're like i can shoot and and film can you also who really is not me not me man i feel like that stash and that rifle go together is so good really thanks man yeah i feel like i feel like he's gonna go ten percent all right let me get my your pro on here all right micah all right see if i can even find it yeah impact head first try who is grantham again i pioneered it [ __ ] you guys good job all right yeah i completely lost it though you're right yeah where the [ __ ] am i all right here we go okay impact right shoulder good job buddy [ __ ] me yeah man this thing really moves got a slippery coat on too right shoulder you're just off elevation's good though make sure that your scope is uh level yeah i think that's what i did wrong it's all good you're probably just pulling the trigger just impact cool you good i'm satisfied with that man all right get in there blake let's do it blake's been guarding us with an sr15 how many rounds left i think you got a solid five you pilot i'm a pilot doctor dr kennel only the real ones now go watch the retro rifle yeah there you are boss all right all right once you're looking through you see the uh reticle yeah all right are you on the target yep oh nice okay so you're gonna hold between that the top chevron and the first chevron down okay just right between there sorry right side right side just off the right shoulder boss all right you're a little high so i want you to um let's bring it down a little bit here just off the right shoulder just off the left shoulder all right here's a new mag brother more than honestly probably you probably slapping yeah we're not calling you a piece of [ __ ] but hey i'm not doing too great all right here it goes right shoulder i want you to push the rifle up further you kind of got the barrel resting on that get it on the handguard more that might help you kind of choke up further there you are impact finally beautiful ah brass hit this i can see it i didn't hear steal something yeah that was a mess you good yeah impact beautiful impact kobe impact okay easy with the kobe we're playing helicopter i was just gonna say hi bro chill well we had a great time shooting the scd today um a pretty cool rifle and a really cool piece of history now the scd is of course still used today by many different militaries and it was really a pleasure to be able to shoot it but i think from shooting it this entire time one thing that we can definitely say is that what matters with everything is training knowing the holds on your weapon what your weapon does as it heats up is going to be more important than just having the most gucci rifle right off the bat so make sure with everything that you get training because as cool as this guy is if you don't have training it's not going to matter tons of great places to get training from hilly strategic bear solutions cog works get out there get the training because again these are tools you are the weapons so make sure that you hone that weapon being your brain guys thank you so much for watching hope you had a good time out here with us i know we did and uh we got nothing else for you all right final thing for you guys and it's gonna directly apply to where we are right now but you know what get out enjoy nature a little bit um it is absolutely gorgeous out here and uh you know you don't want to get to a point in your life where you're either not healthy enough or perhaps you're not at a a point physically we're able to enjoy this beauty so please get out there enjoy what mother nature and what this earth has to offer and uh enjoy yourselves life's a little too short not to love you guys

Channel: Garand Thumb

Views: 3,014,580

Keywords: SVD, dragunov, dragunov review, svd review, dragunov warzone, russian sniper rifle, russian sniper, russian dmr, dmr, dragunov sniper rifle, sniper rifle, svd dragunov, russian weapon, sniper rifle shooting, Russian firearms, dragunov rifle, dragunov sniper, dragunov svd sniper rifle, dragunov gun, dragunov modern warfare

Id: ptF9BBL669w

Length: 35min 49sec (2149 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021