Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the IRCGN,
the central ballistics laboratory of the French Gendarmerie.
Where we are taking a look at some of the particularly
rare and interesting firearms in their reference collection.
Specifically, today we have the
civilian version of the VSS-M Vintorez.
This is Russia's first special purpose 9x39mm integrally-suppressed semi-automatic rifle.
And what's interesting is they had two variations on this gun,
they had the AS Val and they had the VSS Vintorez.
They look similar, the Vintorez has this Dragunov style stock on it
and it was the sniper weapon.
... The "VS" stands for essentially a special sniper rifle.
... And Vintorez by the way, it means apparently like tap or screw.
It seems a weird thing to name the gun after, maybe I've got the translation a bit wrong.
But the AS Val was the assault rifle version.
It had a folding wire stock, it had a separated pistol grip.
And it was intended more in the assault rifle role, for more sustained fire.
... "AS", just like AK it's an assault rifle, and Val means avalanche.
Which makes more sense to me as a thing to name a gun after.
Now the ... actual actions of the two guns are identical.
The VSS Vintorez was given a higher quality barrel.
It was intended for more accurate sniper fire, instead of higher volume sustained fire.
Really it is a little bit odd that they issued both versions.
Now these guns were developed ... to replace, simply, a suppressed AK.
So prior to this, if you wanted a silenced weapon in the Russian military
you would get an AK with a PBS-1 suppressor and subsonic ammunition,
and a replacement rear sight that allowed you to zero for subsonic ammunition.
And once these were introduced, they went primarily to special operations,
counter-terrorist, very elite units.
And the idea was if you're in that sort of unit, you are typically going to have a mission
that's something like you're going to go to a place, you are going to shoot some terrorists
who have taken hostages or done something like that.
And then you are going to go back to base.
And a weapon like this which, by the way, will overheat really fairly quickly
under sustained fire and become difficult to use,
and of course has a limited range because it's a subsonic cartridge,
this rifle is great for that operation.
But it's not so great if you actually run the chance of being out, say, on foot patrol
in the middle of a war and getting into a sustained gun battle with a regular enemy unit.
Now the guys, ... say, typical recon units, who might get into that sort of gunfight,
they continued to use suppressed AKs.
Because if they did need full combat firepower they could take the suppressor off,
change magazine from subsonic ammo to regular standard ball,
and, presto, you've got a standard issue AK service rifle
and you can have a sustained gun fight with it.
So through the ... mid-2000s these were primarily used by groups like
the NKVD under the Soviet Union, the FSB under the Russian Federation.
Alpha, Spetsnaz, those are the sorts of guys who got these guns.
Now these ... have been now made for civilian sale and export.
And we are looking at a civilian pattern here, so let's go ahead and take a closer look at it.
And more importantly, let me show you how this is not a Kalashnikov.
I think a lot of people expect like, "Oh, it's a Russian gun with a charging handle
and the little dog-leg safety lever, it must be a Kalashnikov.
It is far from it, it's actually closer to a vz. 58 almost.
Alright, let's start with the markings on the side, they are a little bit hard to read.
But we have VSS up here and "Made in Russia", all in Russian.
Now before we dig into the internals let me point out,
as I said, this is the civilian version of the VSS-M, the modernised gun.
And the way you can tell it's the modernised version is it has this milled top cover
with a Picatinny rail on it, this one actually has a Russian red dot on it at the moment.
The original ... VSS had a stamped sheet-metal top cover
and it had a side rail down here on the receiver.
This has a latch back here and it's actually quite stiff, has a lot of engagement,
and I suspect does a very good job of holding its zero.
But the modernised version got a Picatinny rail up here.
The modernised version also got this ribbed handguard
instead of a smooth handguard, just sort of a vaguely visible difference.
Then the differences between the civilian and military versions are twofold.
First off, the military version has a selector switch back here,
so it is capable of full-auto fire, despite being ... intended to be a sniper's weapon.
And secondly the military version has a detachable shoulder stock.
So there's a button back here that allows you to pull the stock off.
The civilian version has a fixed stock, and of course is semi-auto only.
Now let's dig into how this works.
So to take it apart we are going to pop the top cover all the way up.
And notice this, this does not have a hammer.
... Well, technically it does have a hammer, this is a linear hammer.
When I fire this hammer spring is going to drop that,
which hits a firing pin in the bolt and fires the gun.
It's not a striker per se, because just like the vz. 58 this actually is working as a hammer.
So that's the hammer spring, this is the main recoil spring.
Magazine here, this is a 10 rounder.
These are proprietary magazines for the 9x39 cartridge.
That round by the way, is essentially just 7.62x39 necked up.
So there's 9x39, there's a 7.62x39.
And just for comparison's sake, there's a 5.45x39.
So there are your three typical Russian military cartridges.
... By necking it up, by making the bullet
larger in diameter and heavier you get a bullet that is naturally subsonic.
And of course that is very important to have a properly suppressed weapon,
because it will not create a supersonic crack.
And a cartridge like one of these two which does move supersonically,
the suppressor cannot stop it from ... making that noise.
Alright, so anyway 10 round 9x39 mag, they did also make 20 and 30 round mags.
Those were more for the AS Val than the Vintorez.
Now with this open we are going to push the recoil spring guide in,
and lift it up like so, I can then take out the recoil spring.
It's got a little bit of a plastic buffer here at the back.
Now I need to lift the ... hammer spring out and I want to be very careful with this,
because, first off, it's easy to get this in not quite right and have the spring kink.
And this is a contained spring,
but the end cap on here you can take off, and it will come off very easily.
And if you let this come off under spring tension
it will fly across the room and you will absolutely never find it again.
So we are going to take the tension off of that.
So there's our hammer spring.
Now I can pull the linear hammer back.
It's going to come all the way back to the rear of the receiver, and then come out.
Notice that we have these two little slots in the hammer.
Those are going to ride on these two crimped-over tops of the receiver.
So if you look inside here, there's no hammer as you would expect in a Kalashnikov.
We just have a dropping sear, like a striker-fired firearm.
Last bit I'll pull the bolt all the way back, this comes back and just lifts out.
Now we can take the bolt out. It's not an AK bolt, we have not one but two cam lugs back here.
We have six locking lugs, although two of them ... have these grooves cut in them.
And those grooves also run in the top rail, right here, of the receiver.
So you'll notice there's one little notch there.
When you are re-installing this you put one side in like that,
and drop it in right at that notch.
And then you can put it in such that the bolt will slide on those two rails. ...
This is a long-stroke gas piston operating system.
So when this is in the gun fully forward it is here.
The gas block is right here, very far back.
Oh, we can also rotate the gas tube and take it out.
So this is the functional equivalent of the gas tube on an AK.
That's going to slide right over the gas piston like that.
Next up we are going to take the suppressor off, it's easily removable for maintenance.
There's just a button here.
All I have to do is push that button in, and rotate the suppressor 90 degrees off to the side.
You can see the barrel has a series of vent holes here.
That helps reduce the muzzle velocity and it gets
some of the propellant gas into this initial expansion chamber back here.
These are your two rear baffles to prevent gas from leaking out the back end of the suppressor.
This is actually a very short travel, very heavy spring.
This, when you lock the suppressor on ... puts tension on the suppressor,
which is important because your iron sights are actually on the suppressor body.
And so it's that spring that ensures
that your iron sights retain zero when you take the suppressor on or off.
Also worth pointing out, if you look at that suppressor,
this is measured in very short increments.
So this goes from 10, which is 100 metres, out to a maximum range of 42, or 420 metres.
And this is in like 20 and 30 metre increments right there.
So they recognise that 9x39 subsonic has a lot of drop.
It has a very rainbow-like trajectory, and the sight is designed to accommodate for that.
Anyway back to the gun, with the suppressor off I can push this button down again
and pull the handguard off.
So there is the gas block, really pretty simple.
You've got a little bit of space here for gas to be vented
into the gas piston before it starts venting into the suppressor.
The handguard looks 3D printed, but it is actually not.
And last but not least, we can take the baffle stack out of the gun.
There is a little spring-loaded pin here, I'm going to lift that up.
There we go. And then I can slide the baffles out of the back of the suppressor.
And there's not much to it there, that is not a complex baffle stack.
That's one long flat piece of steel that had some holes punched in it
and was bent into a series of angles like that.
So when this is fully assembled you have an expansion chamber here,
and these holes in the barrel are going to vent gas into that expansion chamber.
Then the gas is going to hit this stack of baffles.
This is going to sit right there when the gun is fully assembled.
There's a little step in the barrel that prevents it from going any further back.
And that's what you got.
So there you go, one fully disassembled VSS Vintorez M, the civilian model.
Now since the late 2000s these rifles have kind of fallen out of use,
there have been other 9x39mm small arms developed in Russia
that have taken the place of the Vals and the Vintorezes.
So these are showing up now in Ukraine of course, because
anything and everything is going into the fighting in Ukraine.
This particular one of course is not a Ukrainian or Russian captured weapon,
this is a commercial sale example that came out of Russia at least a few years ago.
Anyway, hopefully someday I'll get a chance to do some shooting with these,
it's not this one, unfortunately, but at some point.
A big thanks to the Gendarmerie, to the IRCGN,
for giving me the opportunity to take this apart and show it to you guys.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.