Even Rambo prefers the SVD.
In Fiction
Appearance
Straight, long golden hair , fluffy tail, cat ears, flat chest and nylon stockings. Everything an operator could ever ask for.
Personality
Calm and collective. Sometimes too serious. A big sister character. Only speaks in Russian.
In Real Life
History
In the late 50's, the Soviet Military ran trials to decided that they need a new Sniper weapon that will replace the 1891/30 PU Mosin Nagant. The Soviet military arms bureau required a semi-automatic sniper rifle that performed better than 1.6 MOA to be fit for military service. Yevgeny Fyodorovich Dragunov, a designer at Izhevsk Armory submitted a rifle that proved to be the most accurate and reliable out of all the rifles proposed by the participating constructors. The mass production started in 1963 and the rifle continues to be improved to this day.
Users
The Draguov was used by many Eastern Bloc States behind the Iron Curtain, and was rumored to be used during the Vietnam War. Many variants and frauds of the SVD exist, such as the Polish SWD-M, the Chinese Type 79, to the Romainian PSL, Yugoslavian M76, and the imperfect Iraqi Al Kadesiah.
Performance
The SVD is a semi-automatic rifle with a magazine holding 10 rounds of the 7.62x54r cartridge. The rifle is a squad support rifle meant to, by doctrine "Extend the squad's effective range to 600 meters" as a lighter alternative choice instead of a PKM. The max effective range is around 800m, the maximum range being the promised 1300m. The rifle sports adjustable iron sights, but is usually equipped with a 4x fixed magnification PSO-1 scope and mount. In the 1980's the new PSOP series scopes from fixed 4x-6x-8x magnification options were widely used in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Georgia guaranteeing accurate shots well past 800 meters. Modern sniper loads are known to pierce body armor and increase accuracy to sub MOA levels due to some modification in the neck and bullet lengh. The barrel changed from 1:12.6 to 1:9 rifling after 1970 just so it can shoot 182 grain armor piercing machinegun ammunition more accurately at the trade off for overall lower accuracy. To this date the SVD is the lightest 4 foot long semiautomatic rifle in existence.
United States handloaders have the materials to send a 7.62x54r bullet well past 3kft/s and over 4k Joules of energy near maximum case pressure levels of 52k PSI. Russian modern military sniper loads still have only under 2.7k ft/s and 3.3k Joules.
Cost
$12000-$20000 in the US because of import restrictions.
Current Happenings
Izhevsk, which is now Kalashnikov Concern has been bought out by Rostec. Kalashnikov Concern is given $97.7m to proceed with 2014-2015 new development strategy.
The goal is to promote global investment, partnership, and trade.
The SVD may be closer to acquire then ever.