APS underwater rifle



The APS underwater assault rifle (APS stands for Avtomat Podvodny Spetsialny (Автомат Подводный Специальный) or "Special Underwater Assault Rifle") is an underwater firearm designed by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. It was adopted in 1975. Made by the Tula Arms Plant (Тульский Оружейный Завод, Tulsky Oruzheiny Zavod) in Russia, it is exported by Rosoboronexport.

Underwater, ordinary-shaped bullets are inaccurate and very short-range. The APS fires a steel bolt caliber 5.66 mm (specially designed for this rifle and is often mistaken as 5.56 mm) and 120 mm (4.75 in) long. Its magazine holds 26 cartridges. The APS's barrel is not rifled; the fired projectile is kept in line by hydrodynamic effects. As a result, the APS is somewhat inaccurate when fired out of water.

The APS has a longer range and more penetrating power than spearguns. This is useful in such situations as shooting through reinforced dry suits, and protective helmets (whether air-holding or not), thick tough parts of breathing sets and their harnesses, and plastic casings and transparent covers of some small underwater vehicles.

The APS is more powerful than a pistol, but is bulkier and takes longer to aim, particularly swinging its long barrel and big flat magazine sideways through water.

History
The rising threat of attacks by frogmen in naval bases caused various anti-frogman techniques to be developed, and in the USSR one of these was guard frogmen sent to stop the attackers. At first these guard frogmen were armed only with knives and AK-type rifles. The AK-47 was carried in a waterproof case and could only be used on the surface, so the only effective underwater weapon against enemy frogmen was the knife. The SPP-1 underwater pistol was accepted in 1971, but soon proved to be useful only in close-up self-defence, not in attacking more distant targets. Vladimir Simonov undertook the job of developing an underwater assault rifle. To allow the rifle's mechanism to work underwater, there had to be room for the flow of the water pushed aside by moving parts and by the gas produced by the propellant explosive in the cartridge. The APS rifle was accepted for use in the mid-1970s. One special improvement was a perforated gas tube, and in the sighting. Its design engineer received a state award in 1983.

As with the SPP-1 the first stage of the work was to develop a cartridge. A 5.45 mm by 39 mm cartridge was lengthened by about 115 mm to fit the sharp-fronted steel bolt. Another cartridge version was designed that contained a miniature rocket, which when fired makes a visible streak in the water. Next, Vladimir Simonov designed the rifle. The objective was ambitious; nobody ever before tried to build a functioning automatic underwater firearm. The most important problem was designing a receiver that could work under water. Compared to air, water is relatively incompressible, so the structure had to let water move around easily; as a result, its receiver is open at the rear. Since it operates on the principle of gas discharge, it has a gas controller to let it work underwater and on land.

The APS was adopted in the mid-1970s. Afterwards, there was lengthy improvement work on the APS. One improvement was fitting a perforated gas pipe with a special shield to break up the emitted gas bubbles, making targeting easier and reducing the visibility of the bubbles, allowing stealthier firing of the weapon.

The APS was the primary weapon of Soviet frogmen.

However, since the conception of this new weapon there were objections. It was the perfect weapon for the Soviet frogmen's underwater operations, but it was less use for Spetznaz soldiers fighting both on land and under water.

Out of water the APS can shoot, but its effective range does not exceed 50 meters, and the rifle's lifetime drops to 180 shots in air from 2000 shots underwater. Therefore they mostly carried a SPP-1 pistol for self-defense under water and an AK-74 to fight on land.

Therefore, at the end of the 1980s the ASM-DT amphibious rifle was developed.

In fiction

 * The APS appears carried by Revy in the Black Lagoon manga comic series and the fourth episode of the TV series.
 * The Delta Force 2 game released in 1999 featured the APS as a user-selectable weapon for some missions.
 * It is featured in the newest Call of Duty game, "Call of Duty: Ghosts"