The Russian .345 TK cartridge was released at the beginning of the current year. It was designed to be chambered in pistol caliber carbines for the Russian civilian market. And today we’ll talk about the first firearm made to shoot this cartridge. At the ARMY 2019 exhibition, Kalashnikov Concern introduced the TR9 PARADOX carbine which is essentially a Saiga-9 chambered in .345 TK and sporting a half-rifled barrel.

Let me remind you of the idea behind developing the .345 TK cartridge. Like in the case of the .366 TKM and 9.6x53mm Lancaster, the .345 TK was also specially developed and certified as a smoothbore cartridge. That’s why it has a rather weird .345 caliber that differentiates it from “standard” rifle/PCC calibers. As mentioned above, the TR9 PARADOX has a half rifled barrel. The bore starts smooth with the riflings present only at the last 5-6″ of the barrel. In Russia, this is legally considered a smoothbore barrel with a built-in rifled choke (a.k.a. Paradox choke). The reason why they develop cartridges and guns that would be legally considered smoothbore (still providing close to rifle performance) is that smoothbore firearms are much easier to obtain in Russia. With the rim cut dimensions and overall length of .345 TK similar to the 9x19mm, converting 9mm PCCs into this caliber is probably only a matter of re-barreling the guns. This cartridge should also fit the Saiga-9 magazines at least to the 10 round capacity which is the highest magazine capacity allowed for the civilian use in Russia.

Other features of the TR9 PARADOX are similar to the Saiga-9 which in its turn is the civilian version of the Vityaz-SN submachine gun. It has a chrome lined barrel equipped with a muzzle brake, side folding triangle stock, and hinged receiver cover with a Picatinny rail section. The new carbine is also a direct/simple blowback operated firearm.

Lastly, here is a set of images of the TR9 PARADOX carbine published by Kalashnikov Media.

Images from www.kalashnikov.media , www.kalashnikov.ru