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Forget the Stealth Fighters or New Aircraft Carriers: China's New Rifles Are Killer
[The National Interest] Key Point: The QBU-88 or Type 88 is a relatively modern design, utilizing the bullpup layout to gain additional barrel length. Chinese sources state that the penetration and accuracy are higher than the Type 85.While the U.S. Army is concerned about next-generation Russian precision rifles and tactics, China has also been making significant advances in the field. In the 1980s, the Chinese used practically the same equipment as the Soviet Union. Nowadays, they use fairly different sets of equipment, including some rifles chambered in NATO calibers. The diverging development of Chinese precision rifles from the same base is an interesting parable of small-arms development driven by doctrine. In the 1980s, the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union used the same "sniper" rifles, although these rifles would be more accurately described as designated marksman rifles in the west. The Soviet Union used the SVD, a gas-operated short stroke 7.62x54R rifle that fed from a ten-round-box magazine and had an effective range of around eight hundred meters. With proper Russian sniper ammunition, the SVD could achieve accuracy from 1-2 MOA. China made its own clone of the SVD after capturing a sample during the Sino-Vietnamese war called the Type 79, later refined into the Type 85. These were produced alongside copies of the Soviet PSO-1 4x optical sight. Apparently China has problems copying the SVD as its gunsmithing industries were not quite mature. The cloned PSO-1 was not able to handle the recoil of the 7.62x54R cartridge in early versions, and issues were found with the metallurgy of the firing pin, which broke easily in the Type 79. According to sources in the CPAF, this was fixed by the Type 85. The primary problem with the Type 79 and Type 85 was the lack of proper ammunition for it. Russia issued special 7.62x54R ammunition along with the SVD, the 7N1 and later 7N14 cartridges. China did not develop a version of this and simply issued machine gun ammunition with the Type 79 and Type 85. This resulted in the subpar accuracy. Why China didn’t produce a sniper round is uncertain, but perhaps the limited usage of 7.62x54R in the Chinese military, combined with the PLA’s drive for a new intermediate cartridge in the 1980s made developing an additional sniper round an unnecessary burden. The lack of integration of marksman and precision rifles also delayed the need for such a round, Type 79 and Type 85 rifles were not issued widely among regular troops, only finding use with special operations troops, police units, and border guards. While Russia still continues to use the SVD as the primary "sniper" rifle, China developed a replacement in the QBU-88 in the 1990s. Development started around the early 1990s, with the rifle completing trials in 1996 and first reaching service with the PLA’s Hong Kong garrison in 1997. The real root of the project was in the development of the 5.8mm cartridge for machine guns. A 5.8mm round was developed that was found to perform better or the same as existing 7.62x54R rounds in Chinese inventory, so a specialized rifle was developed in that caliber for sniping purposes. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-11-20 |
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