#9x39mm

It was less than a year ago, at  SHOT Show 2018 when Wolf Ammunition officially introduced the legendary 9x39mm Soviet/Russian cartridge to the US market. Although it is a really interesting and capable round, there are not too many firearms made in this caliber yet because there are several obstacles such as getting the dimensions of the cartridge (as of now, its drawing can’t be found in SAAMI or CIP standards), finding proper barrel blanks, ordering custom reamers and gauges and so on. However, as you have guessed from the title of this article, there are people in the industry who despite the mentioned issues managed to build firearms chambered in 9x39mm.

Russian Tula Arms Plant, the manufacturer of the VSS “Vintorez” integrally suppressed rifle, has recently added a couple of versions of the rifle to the list of civilian products on their website. In order to qualify as civilian firearms, these weapons were converted to semi-automatic only. Both rifles are chambered in 9x39mm just like the original VSS “Vintorez”.

Kalashnikov Concern recently released a new English language video regarding their PL-15K compact pistol, MP-444 pistol, AM-17 and AMB-17 compact assault rifles, and SVCh semiautomatic sniper rifle. By way of a walkthrough from Kalashnikov Concern technical consultant Vladimir Onokoy, the video offers English speakers an important look at the technical features of the new weapons, which were until now something of a mystery to those on this side of the language barrier. The video is embedded below, followed by a written summary:

On display at the recent Russian Army 2017 expo was Kalashnikov’s new AM-17 and AMB-17 compact assault rifles. The AM-17 is a 5.45x39mm caliber improved version of the MA assault rifle introduced last year, designed to fill the same role as the AKS-74U compact assault rifle/personal defense weapon. The AMB-17 is an integrally suppressed variant of the same, firing the 9x39mm dedicated subsonic round first introduced with the AS Val and VSS Vintorez in the 1980s. Pictures of the new rifles have been posted on various social media outlets, such as TFB contributor and small arms expert Max Popenker’s blog.

Steve Dittner of Wolf Performance ammo had this in his pocket at the NRA Show in Atlanta last April. Unfortunately he did not have it on him when I found out about it and missed out on seeing it the last day at NRA. Steve sent this single round to me. Wolf Performance Ammo will be importing 9x39mm. Most of the 9x39mm rounds are armor piercing and not legal for importation into the U.S. There isn’t a lot of information about Wolf’s version of 9x39mm but I was told it will be a FMJ lead projectile. No information on grain weight but hopefully they stick to the original design which is a sub sonic round with a decent amount of mass in the projectile.

RG-037 (a.k.a 7.62x28mm) was an experimental Soviet cartridge developed in 1983. Its parent cartridge is the 5.45x39mm. The RG-037 has similar dimensional relation to 5.45x39mm as the .300 Blackout has to .223 Remington. If you apply the .300 Blackout case forming method to the 5.45x39mm cartridge, then you’ll end up with something similar to the 7.62x28mm. The initial prototypes of this cartridge were probably made by cutting the 5.45x39mm case just below the shoulder (28mm) then necking down the cut case to .311 caliber (with some neck turning).

The Berlin Wall fell some 27 years ago. Now the situation around the Baltic Sea seems to turn to the worse again.

Last month the Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Suhodolskogo, announced that Russian police (the MVD) would be moving away from the AKS-74U (5.45mm 8″ barreled sub-carbine) and the famous Makarov pistol.