MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. Russia’s manufacturer of ORSIS rifles (Promtechnologia) has come up with a smooth bore counterpart of the US assault rifle AR-15 (its military version is known as M16), the company said on Friday.
"Earlier we created AR-15 type rifles for NATO’s 5.56x45 mm cartridge and Russia’s submachine gun 7.62x39 mm cartridge. Our designers have configured the well-known platform to Russia’s smooth bore cartridge .366," ORSIS said.
The hunting cartridge .366 TKM 9.5x38 mm was designed by the company TechCrim for smoothbore weapons with partially rifled barrel or removable oval spiral barrel unit. Under Russian legislation the cartridge is considered as a smooth bore gun ammunition.
"Our idea was to create a weapon possessing parameters similar to those of the rifled one, which can be sold to customers without a five-year record of owning smooth bore weapons," ORSIS said.
The Russian law establishes a five-year record of owning smooth bore guns as a mandatory requirement for purchasing rifled weapons. The new gun from ORSIS has an oval-spiral bore (Lancaster drilling). It does not fall under the definition of rifled weapons.
At the same time the oval spiral bore makes the bullet rotate, thus making it more stable in flight. The manufacturer said that tests have confirmed the smooth bore AR-15 has an accuracy pretty close to that of the rifled replica designed for the 7.62-39 mm cartridge.
ORSIS rifles
In September 2019 Promtechnologia launched batch production of the ORSIS-AR15J rifle - a counterpart of the US AR-15 rifle - for 5.56x45 mm NATO cartridge. In December of the same year a configuration for the Soviet cartridge 7.62x39 was finalized.
The AR-15 was created in the late 1950s. In 1962, the rifle was authorized for military use as M16 and has been in service ever since. According to open statistics, more than 8 million pieces of this rifle have been manufactured.
Apart from the counterpart of the US rifle the company manufacturers high accuracy sniper rifles ORSIS T-5000, adjusted to the requirements of Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya). The T-5000 can fire 7.62 mm and 8.6 mm bullets. In March 2012, Rosgvardiya said the T-5000 would be used in counter-terrorist operations.