Sniper fly swatter for special forces, paratroopers and marines

FSO sniper, Moscow, Kremlin, May 9, 2022. Yes, news from May of this year that FSO specialists were photographed with a “new weapons", is not entirely true.
This rifle is actually not new and has been known for a long time, and many people know it under the slang names “fly” or “fly swatter”. Yes, yes, this is the same Steyr SSG 08 from the computer online games Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Counter-Strike 2. But this is more of a lyrical digression than a part stories this weapon.

Probably the most famous photo of an Austrian rifle in the Russian Army. Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev when he was President of the Russian Federation in Solnechnogorsk, 2010. A fighter training on a simulator is holding a Steyr SSG 04 rifle, which at that time was just entering service.
Like many weapons, the SSG 08 is a development of another system and has a long service history.
The ancestor of the SSG (Scharfschützengewehr, literally translated as a sniper rifle) series rifles from Steyr-Mannlicher was the SSG 69. In the 1960s, the Austrian army was still using weapons from World War II. Some were left over from the Germans, some were from the Soviet Army, some were supplied from the USA.
They decided to replace the variegated zoo of small arms, which were already quite outdated, by the end of the 1960s. The new army sniper rifle had quite stringent requirements. These are compactness, low (for such a weapon, of course) weight, reliability, and good accuracy.

A soldier of the 7th Guards Air Assault Red Banner, Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov Division (mountain) with a Steyr SSG 04 rifle at the shooting range, 2011.
And the heirs of the Austro-Hungarian weapons school from Steyr-Mannlicher did an excellent job. The rifle weighed 4 kg, was 1 centimeters long, and the rotary magazine held 140 rounds, without protruding beyond the dimensions of the weapon stock. The stock itself was also quite innovative by the standards of its time, as it was polymer.
Well, the bolt stem with three pairs of locking lugs in its rear part and the barrel, which was produced by cold forging, made the rifle incredibly durable and reliable. Well, that is, if you want to shoot a magnum rifle from a rifle, please, you want a machine-gun cartridge with a heavy or armor-piercing bullet, but for good measure (well, you never know, it’s an army weapon).

Weapons of fighters 7 dshd (g) on display for journalists, 2011. In the foreground is an Austrian rifle Steyr SSG 04.
The rifle began to enter service with the Austrian army and police, as well as the Dutch marines. In 1970, a civilian model appeared. And the weapon simply blew up the arms market, becoming a real hit. It was used by various law enforcement agencies in more than two dozen countries, and the release of the civilian version was discontinued only in 2015.

A sniper pair from the Senezh Center near Moscow, who won the Team Open Competition in shooting with rifled weapons, November 4, 2012. The fighter in the foreground has a Steyr SSG 08.
In 2004, another sniper rifle for the army and police, the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 04, was released. It became heavier and longer, because the requirements for range and accuracy have changed over almost 40 years, but the main thing remained unchanged - the emphasis on high performance and reliability. And the dimensions, by the standards of the early 2000s, were still quite modest.

One of the rifles of the sniper pair that won the competition on November 4, 2012 is the Steyr SSG 08 in .300 Win.Mag caliber. You can clearly see how compact the weapon becomes with the stock folded and without the BBBS.
The bolt stem has changed a lot. The locking lugs were moved forward. There were 4 of them, two after each other, the front ones were very massive, the rear ones were smaller, as if they were belaying.
The designers introduced the patented Safe Bolt System (SBS) into the rifle, which was tested over several decades on commercial models of the Austrian manufacturer.
In addition to the fuse of its own design, SBS is an increase in the reliability of the bolt (a special groove in the bolt stem allows it not to freeze to the receiver and should, up to a certain point, remove dirt, preventing jamming) and strengthening the receiver. The receiver is reinforced with an additional bushing, the main task of which is to prevent the breakthrough of powder gases from the chamber towards the shooter.

Weapons of the 155th Separate Guards Order of Zhukov Pacific Marine Corps Brigade fleet. In the foreground is a Steyr SSG 08.
The 2004 model was like a breakthrough in modern sniper weapons. The concept was tested, found successful, and 4 years later it was developed into the next model - Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 08.
This rifle again became a hit with Austrian gunsmiths. It was adopted by the Austrian special forces themselves, law enforcement officers and the military of more than a dozen countries.
The main difference from the previous model was the presence of a folding stock. The rifle has grown in length, but the Austrians still want to make their weapons compact, so at least in the transport position they decided to be more compact than all competitors. With the stock folded, the rifle has a length of just under a meter (or a little more, depending on the cartridge used and the length of the barrel), which is generally a ridiculous figure for a sniper weapon.

One of the airborne troops who took part in the assault on Gostomel airport, with his Steyr SSG 08 sniper rifle.
Austrian rifles have long and firmly taken their place in the weapons of various domestic special forces. In fact, photos of FSO specialists on Red Square with the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 08 have already been published, and there were plenty of other information sources with this weapon.
These rifles are firmly established not only in the arsenal of the FSO, but also the Airborne Forces, the Marine Corps, and the Special Forces. For snipers and reconnaissance airborne troops, this is a long-tested and beloved system.
Austrian sniper rifles were purchased both before and after the events of 2014. Several Western publications at one time lamented that after 2014, Western sanctions do not prevent the Russian military from buying Austrian weapons (we were talking not only about rifles, but also about the creations of Gaston Glock).
Now SSG rifles are actively used by our fighters in the Northern Military District zone.

A photo that appeared in the information field in the spring of this year. Allegedly, the photo shows a Steyr SSG 08 rifle from a fighter from one of the Airborne Forces units. Most likely, the cartridge exploded in the barrel; unfortunately, this is not such a rare problem in the case of self-loading ammunition. At the same time, the fighter himself was not injured; apparently, the Safe Bolt System (SBS) did its job, and there was no breakthrough of powder gases towards the shooter.
Even if the occasion turned out to be a little exaggerated: the rifle that was photographed at the parade was far from new, and it has been in service with the FSO for a long time, but this is still an opportunity to remember such an interesting weapon that faithfully serves our soldiers at the front and in the rear.

Weapons of soldiers of a sniper company of one of the Airborne Forces units in the airborne forces in the Northern Military District zone, 2023. A Steyr SSG 08 rifle is mounted on a tripod.
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