Iranian 12.7 mm anti Material Sniper Goes under Production

Sep

New Member
(IsraelNN.com) Iran has begun to produce heavy machine-guns with armor-piercing bullets, Iranian state television reported today. Iranian Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said the 12.7-millimeter gun has a range of 2.5 kilometers and is suitable for snipers.

"The United States had protested to a European country about selling the gun [to Iran], while we have already produced it," Shamkhani said. "Today the first consignment of the weapon was delivered. Now our snipers can target the enemy in their armored personnel carriers and concrete bunkers."

The gun weighs 35 pounds and can be mounted on a vehicle.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=77700


Pics: http://www.iribnews.ir/newspic/05/03/01/13rsh2.jpg
 
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Red aRRow

Forum Bouncer
Intersting. Can somebody identify the rifle on which this one is based upon?
The pieces in the picture look quite professionally made.
 

Sep

New Member
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #3
Red aRRow said:
Intersting. Can somebody identify the rifle on which this one is based upon?
The pieces in the picture look quite professionally made.
Recently Iran bought around 800 Steyr .50 HS from Austria.
 

highsea

New Member
The gun in the picture is the Steyr .50 HS. Obviously a diferent weapon than the article was referring to, since it is a bolt action single shot, not a heavy machine gun.
 

HateBreed

New Member
i dont think that the US and israeli generals would feel disadvantaged on the battlefield. simply because its the first time the iranians are holding a 50cal in their hands, while US has done it since 'Nam. Also i have heard that the stocks on this steyr HS cracks after sustained shots. Aside from that, the US' barrett hits harder, is battle proven, has NO problem chewing specialist ammo (even API-HP) bullets. i cant also see a recoil receiving spring around the barrel on the steyr.
If they had wanted to have hi caliber weapon to start equipping thier army, better do it with Hecate -I or PGM. Nice bolt actions.
 

HateBreed

New Member
a maximum of an APC (level 3) with a 12.7 hollow point penetrator at a range of 1100 meters max. consitent second shot at the same place will blow a hole in the plating. now, if the shooter is using hi fragmentation ammo, then the spalling that will take place inside the tank can waste the tank crew.
 
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HateBreed

New Member
uhh, i dont know which one u are talking about:confused: ?
if u are refering to the 12.7mm then i dont think its tactically a good idea to penetrate the abram with the 12.7mm cuz it wont kill it with the first shot. now by the time a sniper will be aiming for a third or fourth lucky shot, the abram tank crew can sight the shooter with its viewfinder, cue the target location to the tank gunner and...........u know what would happen next!!
tank hunting can be possible with the steyr's amr (15.9mm tungsten coated core) in the hands of a pack of snipers that may engage in an ambush. but ofcourse the target has to be a lone abram tank.
therefore the circumstances need be judges tactically rather than making up on the equipment's capabilities.
 

gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
HateBreed said:
if u are refering to the 12.7mm then i dont think its tactically a good idea to penetrate the abram with the 12.7mm cuz it wont kill it with the first shot.
A 12.7mm has got no hope of penetrating front or side armour on an abrams/chally 2/leclerc/leo2A4,5,6.

Even if it was a RAUFOSS round it would have no luck. A team of snipers would have no chance as well. the fact that they're dispersed makes life even worse as they can't concentrate what limited firepower they have on any vulnerable part of the tank.

APC's yes, Modern western MB tanks? Not a fat chance in Hades. I worked on an armouring project in the late 90's for an IFV that was .50 cal resistant (using the full german armour suite). AP rounds got nowhere with it - and that was tested at 20m increments starting from 50m all the way out to 1500m.

A Hecate/Barrett/AI will punch the daylights out of an AC/IFV/APC - but even with some of the current classified .50 cal AP and exploding rounds it would do little but stuff up the sights (assuming that your 50 cal sniper was able to bracket shots into the same area - thats a hell of a cep on a moving vehicle.

BTW, the aust/french/brit and US can retro field sniper detection systems on some of their vehicles. The French absolutely chewed up 50cal snipers in Bosnia using that system. Australia has a similar system which is also man portable and part of the Future Soldier concept. The reaction time to a slaved respondent is less than .5 second upon detection. Anotherwords, the system will respond on target to an accuracy level of .5 metre in under .5 second. If the respondent is a slaved mortar system, then that shooter will be dead irrespective of how fast he thinks he shoot and scoot. A 60mm slaved mortar will slot anything within a 5m radius and with less than .5% variation on CEP (depending on distance to target - but no greater than 1 metre detection error at 400m)

If that system is slaved to the main gun - then that means that on an MBT like the Abrams they will cue and respond within 10-12 seconds to the threat.

Apart from that, doctrine in modern armies doesn't see any MBT go wandering off on its own, they go in supported - and depending on which armiy we are talking about, likely sniper positions will be swept before major presence is committed.
 

HateBreed

New Member
good post:)
see, that is actually a very detailed extension to my reply i think. i myself was very skeptic towards a successful combination of using snipers (no matter how heavily armed) to go kill armor.
 

Salman78

New Member
Nice weapon to seriously annoy tank/APC crews.
take out their headlights, sensors, radiator vents etc :D
and when anyone pops up the top... bang
 

starwarsworld

Banned Member
Salman78 said:
Nice weapon to seriously annoy tank/APC crews.
take out their headlights, sensors, radiator vents etc :D
and when anyone pops up the top... bang
Pretty good ooking but dont u expact so much with small gun tank is far more capable then this gun. with more fire power gun on hull and dou think this gun can break tank armour and rich on it sensors and radiator u must be dreaming


:monkey :monkey :monkey
 

HateBreed

New Member
it wont actually annoy the tank crew. u know. considering that tanks are built to take annoyance from RPG rounds. it would just be a matter of time before the tank crew picks out the position of the snipers and if that dont work then wthey will simply leave the area. its far more convienient to use a man portable AT round like the LAW or the AT-8 or even more lethal javelin.
remember, the tank crew has to be high up on 8th sky with pot to pop its head out of the hull. so it just wont happen.
 

chrisstevenson

New Member
Does anyone have a working link to the picture of the Steyr 50cal rifle form that Iranian news site? I dint realise that Steyr go that contract, no wonder the original manufacturer www.50cal.de shut his website down!
Thanks.
 

Soner1980

New Member
Hi, I dont know what country has supplied them the technical data. But producing a sniper rifle is not so hard anymore. Especially a country like Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt of the 2nd World Nations with they are the richest of all.

Turkey has also designed an indigineous rifle named Avunya. 50.cal and able to penetrate 12,5 mm of armor plating (RHA) at 500 meters with ball ammo. You can perforate all lightly wheeled APC's like the BTR series with it. But with SLAP ammo, everything will change. M82A1 SLAP is able to penetrate 19mm at 1,5 km of distance. It will pierce a hole in all APC within 1000 meters and some (older) tanks can be stopped when hit at their critical places.

Iran will speed up their research for a special bullet to penetrate more armor like in Iraq when a US M1 Abrams was hit by a Russian made 7,62mm bullet and the armor was pierced. Shame? No I don't think so but it's frustrating when a modern MBT is stopped with a 1950's rifle. If the Iranians will use critical alloy, I don't know.
 

rossfrb_1

Member
Soner1980 said:
{snip}

Iran will speed up their research for a special bullet to penetrate more armor like in Iraq when a US M1 Abrams was hit by a Russian made 7,62mm bullet and the armor was pierced. Shame? No I don't think so but it's frustrating when a modern MBT is stopped with a 1950's rifle. If the Iranians will use critical alloy, I don't know.
Do you have a cite for that? It's not a story that I've read about. I vaguely remember something about a 25mm DU friendly fire incident where the round was supposed to have pierced the engine cowling of an M1 at the rear or somesuch, but a 7.62?? Might knock some paint off the armour.

rb
 

norinco89

New Member
a 12.7mm or more commonly know as a .50 caliber machine gun that is suitable for sniping. hummmm..... What a joke! Light weight 50 cals weight 27kgs or around 50 pounds. try using a 50 pound sniper!

Its just a heavy machine gun. no biggy.

If columbia invents a heavy machine gun no would care. Its not news worth mentioning. Unless the gun is revolutionary like the g11, mk44 or OICW then it should be mentioned.

A heavy machine gun? give me a break.

12.7mm, armour piecing, 2.5 kilo or 1.25 miles range. Thats pretty standart
 

aaaditya

New Member
chrisstevenson said:
Does anyone have a working link to the picture of the Steyr 50cal rifle form that Iranian news site? I dint realise that Steyr go that contract, no wonder the original manufacturer www.50cal.de shut his website down!
Thanks.
well here are a couple of links on the steyr 50cal rifles :

http://www.world.guns.ru/sniper/sn64-e.htm

http://www.world.guns.ru/sniper/sn46-e.htm

hope you enjoy them,also check out this website if you want information on any other weapon system.

www.world.guns.ru

by the way steyr has been banned by the usa for supplying weapons to iran.
 

aaaditya

New Member
norinco89 said:
a 12.7mm or more commonly know as a .50 caliber machine gun that is suitable for sniping. hummmm..... What a joke! Light weight 50 cals weight 27kgs or around 50 pounds. try using a 50 pound sniper!

Its just a heavy machine gun. no biggy.

If columbia invents a heavy machine gun no would care. Its not news worth mentioning. Unless the gun is revolutionary like the g11, mk44 or OICW then it should be mentioned.

A heavy machine gun? give me a break.

12.7mm, armour piecing, 2.5 kilo or 1.25 miles range. Thats pretty standart
the gun under discussion here is a sniper rifle ,sniper rifles have long range but very slow rate of fire(usually single shot,and in some case 3 shots),they also have lesser magazine capacity (1,3 or 5 rounds),these guns along with 14.5mm,15.2mm and 20mm sniper rifles are also called as the anti-material rifles since they can be used to destroy light vehicles and lightly fortfied fixed posistions.

a 12.5 mm machine guns is a completely different monster,also classified as a heavy machine gun ,it has a very high rate of fire (around 700 rounds /min) and are usually belt fed,unlike snipers they are not all accurate.
 
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