Russia’s newest .338 LM sniper rifle apparently works while frozen (VIDEO)

The Russian Ministry of Defense this week released footage from testing of their next-gen long range rifle, right out of the freezer.

The T-5000 “Tochnost” (Russian for roughly “accuracy” or “precision”) has been testing recently at the Klimovsk’s Central Scientific Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering, (the Russians really like long names) near Moscow. In the above video– don’t freak out, it is in Russian– the rifle is shown first in some sedate shooting,by a chill guy we’ll just call Dimitri, in the prone position. He even has a shooting mat.

This all changes.

They toss the gun in the freezer at -50 C (-122 F) and leave it there to die like it’s James Bond or something. Dimitri then comes back and pulls the rifle out (we know what you are thinking: how much time passed, right?) and hit the range again, sans optics, which may not be able to take the chill.

It seems legit, as the gun ices up when it hits the air and good old Dimitri looks pretty hesitant to wrap his body around the chilly long-range rifle, but who knows. Cut to scene of Dimitri shooting the rifle in a rain booth. Poor guy, apparently all the hacking jobs were taken.

The .338 Lapua Magnum rifle is based on the Orsis T-5000, which was introduced in 7.62x51mm and .300 Win back in 2011 by TsNIITochMash for international sales. The larger Tochnost is to be used by Russian special forces “as well as for anti-terrorist and security activities,” as noted by Alexei Schyokin with the agency.

But how does it compare to the classic 7.62x54R Dragunov SVD?

Whereas the old school Dragunov, which was more of a designated marksman’s rifle anyway, could sometimes tap in at 2 MOA at 100m, the Tochnost is billed at being accurate to 0.3-0.5 MOA.

The Tochnost takes a number of cues from standard Western precision rifles, for instance, it is bolt-action, has a heavy barrel on an aluminum bedding block, is CNC machined to a tolerance of less than 0.0025mm, and its chassis resembles everything this side of St. Petersburg from Ruger’s latest offering to the Austrian Ritter and Stark SLX-1 and the Israeli DAN .338.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the rifle Tochnost is expected to be fielded by 2020 as a dedicated sniper tool, with other rifles still used as DMRs– the Dragunov’s old role.

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