Lobaev Corporation and its precision rifles
Currently, Lobaev Corporation consists of: KBIS - Integrated Systems Design Bureau, which specializes in the development and pilot production of small-scale samples weapons high accuracy and long range, fire complexes, means of preparing data for shooting, as well as other innovative products; LOBAEV Arms - an enterprise that was formed by the team of Tsar-Pushka, a leader in the production of unique high-precision and long-range sniper rifles; LOBAEV Hummer Barrels is an enterprise specializing in the production of high-precision barrel blanks and barrels not only for firearms, but also for airguns.
“I had more 12 best sniper rifles in the world, I shot from many more rifles, and four of them were Lobaev rifles,” told reporters RBC Andrei Ryabinsky, who is the head of the board of directors of the MIC group of companies, Ryabinsky is seriously keen on sniper shooting. Vladislav Lobaev was his instructor, at the end of 2015 of the year they were able to set one of the world records in shooting. From the Lobaev SVLC-14 “Dusk” super-long-range rifle, 5 managed to hit the target 50 on 50 centimeters, located at a distance of 2165 meters (Vladislav Lobaev himself was a spotter), in a row. “I can responsibly declare that Lobayev’s rifles in the .408 Cheyenne Tactical caliber (10,3x77 mm) currently simply have no equal in the world, and if they do not exceed the caliber .338 (8,6X70 mm) in the world, they definitely compete with the best world models sniper weapons ", - said Ryabinsky. It is worth noting that in April 2015, the company set a world record in rifle range - 3400 meters. The record shot, which confirms the high position of the Russian company in the international arena, was made by 9 April 2015 of the year from the custom version of the SVLC-14C rifle.
You can tell more about this rifle. The SVLK-14С TWILIGHT super-long-rifle (Dusk) is a unique weapon that for the past six years has been showing record numbers at distances that significantly exceed the two-kilometer line. The new model of this rifle has a reinforced multilayer sandwich of carbon fiber, fiberglass, Kevlar and is specifically designed to be used with such powerful ammunition, which is .408 Cheyenne Tactical (10,3x77 mm). To further enhance the design of the rifle, a long aluminum chassis was specially integrated into its box.
At the heart of this rifle is a well-deserved bolt group King v.3, which is produced in tolerances significantly more stringent than is customary in the industry today. The body of the receiver is made of aviation aluminum with a threaded insert of high-alloy, corrosion-resistant steel. The shutter of the rifle is also made of solid corrosion-resistant steel. The SVLC-14С rifle was intentionally left exclusively in a single-shot version in order to provide the necessary rigidity of the receiver, which is needed when firing at ultra-long distances, as well as the modularity of the weapon and the change of gauges (gates with larvae: Cheytac, Magnum, Supermagnum). Match barrel rifle LOBAEV Hummer Barrels, made of stainless steel, completes the picture. Manufactured to the highest standards of the rifle world, these barrels make shooting on the edge of the possible - possible. True, and pay for it will have a rather big amount. According to the manufacturer, the SVLC-14 rifle will cost the client at least 1 250 000 rubles.
Performance characteristics SVLC-14С:
Caliber - .408 Cheytac / .338LM / .300WM.
The maximum effective range of use - 2500 + m.
Technical accuracy - 0.3 MOA / 9 mm between the centers (5 shots on 100).
The muzzle velocity is more than 900 m / s.
Overall dimensions: length - 1430 mm, height - 175 mm, width - 96 mm.
Barrel length - 900 mm.
Weight - 9600 g.
Trigger pull - adjustable from 50 to 1500.
The working temperature range is -45 / + 65 C.
Vladislav Lobaev, Chief Designer and Founder of Lobaev Corporation, his brother Nikolay Lobaev, its director and co-founder. Vladislav was a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. It would seem that the specialty has nothing to do with firearms, but in 2000, he took up benchrest, fascinated by this type of modern sport during his business trip to the USA in the middle of 1990, as an employee of the private detective bureau "Alex". Benchrest or shooting from the machine (English benchrest shooting) is a type of shooting-technical sports, which is referred to as high-precision shooting. Its main task is to achieve high accuracy. The task of the shooter in benchrest is to make 5 (or 10, depending on the conditions of the competition) shots at a test target. This type of high-precision shooting has grown from the most banal shooting of a weapon from a sandbag, eventually becoming a separate type of shooting sport. Shooting in benchrest is performed sitting at a special table with the installation of a rifle in the focus for shooting.
“A strong passion for shooting sports led to an understanding of the obvious things - it’s extremely difficult to win with a weapon at a serious international competition,” Lobaev told RBC journalists. Exact rifles were available only to the elect, in practice this meant only one thing: if your rifle is not prepared by a famous gunsmith, then you automatically drop out of the list of applicants fighting for prizes. Therefore, Vladislav Lobayev decided to design his own rifles, going on an internship in the United States, where he studied with famous gunsmiths Clay Spencer and Thomas Spidi Gonzales. Returning back to Russia in 2003, he founded Tsar-Pushka LLC with his brother, this company was engaged in the creation and production of high-precision rifles.
“At that time, it was a real startup to start a business, had to sell a private four-room apartment in Moscow on Arbat. The decision to open a business was difficult, especially for my relatives and loved ones, ”Lobaev said now with a laugh. According to him, at the first stage, his colleagues and benchrest friends also helped with business development money. In 2005, Tsar-Pushka became the country's first private company that managed to obtain a license to manufacture weapons - the well-known companies Orsis and Skat will start working in Russia later. “We became the first company to embark on this journey from scratch,” emphasizes Lobaev. After obtaining a license in Russia, the company first rented premises located at the Podolsk Electromechanical Plant, and in 2007, it opened a small production facility in the small town of Tarusa, located in the Kaluga Region.
In 2010, in an interview with Forbes magazine, Lobaev said that in 2009, Tsar-Pushku sold 80 rifles, earning approximately 20 million rubles in revenue, and in 2010, the company planned to produce already 200 rifles. However, in the same year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade refused to extend the license to Tsar-Pushku, issued in 2005 for a period of 5 years. Because of this, the company could not only produce weapons, but also sell finished products in Russia. Without naming specific companies, Lobayev said that the events of 2010 of the year were a manifestation of “unfair competition”. "We then made a decision - than to fight and lay our head here, it is better to reduce the degree of tension," he says. In 2010, almost all of the then team of the company, consisting of 15 people, moved to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In this country, under a contract with the Arab holding Tawazun, a new company was launched - Tawazun Advanced Defense Systems (TADS), where the team from Russia continued to do their direct business - the development and production of high-precision shooting systems.
While in the UAE, the Russians were able to develop and prepare for mass production about 20 models of ultra-accurate long-range sniper weapons, two of their rifles eventually began to be made by Caracal, which absorbed TADS in 2013 year. The result of their work in the Emirates was the creation of sniper rifles: KS-11M (King Single) with interchangeable barrels, TSR-30 (Tactical Sniper Rifle) in 300 WM or .338 LM calibers, and TSR-40 of .338 SnipeTac caliber, which was created on the basis of the rifle model KS-11M. These sniper rifles were adopted by the elite units of the UAE army and the Royal Guard (Royal Guard). All rifles were designed to fire at a distance of more than 2000 meters.
In 2013, their contract with TADS ended, after which the Tsar Cannon employees decided to return to the Russian Federation. Moreover, the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued the company very quickly in December 2013 of the year, this time the license for the production of weapons was issued indefinitely. After his return to Russia, Vladislav Lobayev together with his brother Nikolai Lobayev founded the Lobaev corporation, which is still in the formative stage. Over the 2014 year, this corporation was able to design and introduce into production 7 new models of high-precision long-range rifles. “All over the world, no one has ever done this, Russian productions are not able to do that either,” Lobaev is rightly proud of his company’s speed. According to him, at present, the corporation is gradually moving away from the practice of manufacturing "piece" rifles, intending to bring all new models of weapons to the market already in series. "For the first time in stories Companies we will work on the warehouse glut. We will add some variety to the coverings of the rifles produced, so that the buyer can choose “exactly the same, but with mother-of-pearl buttons,” Vladislav Lobaev told journalists smiling.
According to the designer, already in 2016 Lobaev Corporation is going to earn 150-200 million rubles in revenue. At the same time, in 2015, the revenue amounted to "several tens of millions of rubles." According to Vladislav, in the past two years, a lot of money and effort has been spent on creating new models of high-precision small arms, and now sales should grow. But the Lobaev corporation is not going to stop at the release of rifles alone. In 2015, a tactical robot was added to traditional products, which received the designation Minirex RS1A3, which was released by a new division of the corporation - Lobaev Robotics. The robot on a caterpillar platform weighs 23 kg, it will receive 7,62 × 39 mm caliber systems, as well as 40LW and 338LW sniper systems. Moreover, this is only the first sign in the line of combat robots corporations. According to Vladislav Lobaev, the company has already announced the creation of assault robots, counter-snipers and sniper robots. “Currently, we are working on the network integration of robots into single units on the battlefield, we are looking for specialists who will write the necessary software, but for now, the work has been outsourced,” Lobaev notes. The Lobaev Robotics division already has its first third-party investor, whose name is kept secret; the Lobaev brothers do not yet have partners in other divisions.
In the Russian Federation, the demand for high-precision rifles is small and it is unlikely that it will seriously grow, for this reason Lobaev Corporation needs a global sales market, Andrei Ryabinsky notes. In his opinion, the “Lobaevsky” rifles are needed by the Russian army and special units, which, if they acquire them now, to a very limited extent (according to Lobaev himself, now up to 80% of rifle sales falls to civilian weapons). Actually, the presidential security service (SBP) armed with these rifles - a unit of the Federal Security Service of Russia, which was first interested in Lobaev’s ballistic calculator and then his rifles.
Most often, the sniper in dealing with the task set before him deals with fixed firing ranges: he has the opportunity to measure the distance to the target, introduce all the necessary corrections to the scope and take a shot at the right time. At the same time, SBP snipers, in fact, are sniper hunters. They have no fixed range or much time to prepare a shot: they must hit the target almost instantly in the entire range of ranges - from maximum to minimum, while their opponent is preparing to shoot. The chances of a sniper and a counter sniper are equalized due to a higher level of training for the FSO fighters, as well as better equipment - in particular, the rifles themselves. The fact that the president’s security service is armed with Lobaev’s rifles is in itself a sign of recognition of the highest quality of their products.
Lobaev himself estimates the volume of the domestic market for high-precision rifles - from 2-3 to 8-10 thousands of units per year. According to him, the Russian market is growing slowly, although it attracts new people. “He considers legislative restrictions on the possession of rifled weapons to be one of the main limiting factors. It would be reasonable, for example, to lower the barrier from 5 years to 2 years, and for the military and citizens who served in the army in general to cancel it, ”says Vladislav Lobaev. Sanctions against the Russian Federation, in fact, removed foreign competitors from the Russian arms market, but Lobaev is in no hurry to rejoice at this manifestation: the lack of cheap long-term loans in the market does not allow domestic weapon companies to take advantage of the unique situation to seize the market that has become free from foreign products. “A high-quality, good, massive and inexpensive rifle is within our reach, but in practice, investments in the amount of 30 million dollars are required for their introduction into mass production. We are not yet able to provide this, there is no money, ”emphasizes Lobayev.
In addition, sanctions against Russia do not allow the company to sell their products in countries that have joined them. “Therefore, it is necessary to locate production directly in their territory. For us, this is a kind of business expansion, we have already prepared proposals in just this vein, ”Lobaev argues, noting that the corporation already has a number of proposals for developing rifle production in other states. If we talk about proposals for cooperation from the Russian arms giants, then further non-specific and informal negotiations are not going. Russian private arms companies and companies with state participation cannot find a common language. Lobayev notes that in the Russian Federation everyone is forced to do everything himself, although coordination in the arms industry is necessary and would only benefit her.
Information sources:
http://www.rbc.ru/magazine/2016/05/570fa16e9a794781cb616f9e?from=rbc_choice
http://sniper-weapon.ru/rossiya/250-svl-svl-svlk-14s-tsvl-8-dxl-3-snajperskaya-vintovka-lobaeva
http://www.popmech.ru/weapon/9439-neveroyatnoe-proizvodstvo-v-rossii-oruzhie-okhrany-prezidenta/#full
http://lobaevarms.ru
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