User:Katangais/sandbox/SKS

The SKS (Samozaryadny Karabin sistemy Simonova, 1945 (Самозарядный карабин системы Симонова, 1945; Self-loading Carbine of (the) Simonov system, 1945) is a semi-automatic carbine chambered for the 7.62×39mm round, designed in 1943 by Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov. A reliable and relatively inexpensive weapon, the SKS was first produced in the Soviet Union but later widely exported and manufactured by various nations. Its distinguishing characteristics include a permanently attached folding bayonet and a hinged, fixed magazine. As the SKS lacked select-fire capability and its magazine was limited to ten rounds, it was rendered obsolete in the Soviet Armed Forces by the introduction of the AK-47 in the 1950s. Nevertheless, SKS carbines continued to see service with the Soviet Border Troops, Internal Troops, and second-line and reserve army units for decades.

The SKS was manufactured at Tula Arsenal from 1945 to 1958, and at the Izhevsk Arsenal from 1953 to 1954, resulting in a total Soviet production of about 2.7 million carbines. Throughout the Cold War, millions of additional SKS carbines and their derivatives were also manufactured under license in the People’s Republic of China, as well as a number of countries allied with the Eastern Bloc. The SKS was exported in vast quantities and found favour with insurgent forces around the world as a light, handy weapon which was adequate for guerrilla warfare despite its conventional limitations. Beginning in the 1980s, a number were also sold on the civilian market in North America, where they remain popular as hunting and sporting rifles.

Development history
The SKS was developed during World War II by Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov, a prominent Soviet small arms engineer who had started his career working in the same facility which produced the Fedorov Avtomat, the first Russian automatic rifle. Simonov developed an interest in gas-operated automatic weapons and occasionally produced prototypes for the Red Army beginning in 1926. In 1931, he created a prototype rifle with select-fire capability that included several of the same design features later incorporated into the SKS, namely a mechanism which locked the bolt to the rear once the last round was fired and a hinged bayonet which folded beneath the rifle's fore end when not in use. Simonov also produced a prototype carbine based on the same design, which had a much shorter barrel and utilised parts made of lighter materials. This was tested by the Red Army in 1935 but was never approved for serial production. A modified version of Simonov's original rifle prototype entered production in 1936 as the AVS-36.

While the AVS-36 soon proved its effectiveness in combat during the Winter War, it was considered overly complex and difficult to produce efficiently. Simonov had chambered the AVS-36 for the 7.62×54mmR round, which was developed for the bolt-action Mosin–Nagant service rifle and did not feed well into an automatic weapon from a detachable box magazine. The teething problems associated with the AVS-36 led to its being largely superseded by the SVT-38 and SVT-40 series of semi-automatic rifles. Meanwhile, Simonov turned his attention to the carbine variant of the AVS-36 prototype, which he modified with a ten-round fixed magazine designed to be fed from stripper clips through the top of the receiver. A second version with a five-round fixed magazine was being tested by the Red Army before the project was shelved due to Operation Barbarossa; the results of these trials revealed the carbine was suffering from many of the same feeding problems as the AVS-36; it often failed to cycle the large 7.62×54mm rounds correctly.

During World War II, the 7.62×54mm ammunition was blamed for an unusually high rate of parts breakage on Soviet SVT-40s. Combat experience with the AVS-36 and SVT-40 also persuaded Simonov and other Soviet weapons engineers that this cartridge, while adequate for the Mosin-Nagant, was simply too large, heavy, and powerful to be used in new automatic and semi-automatic rifle designs. Changes in modern infantry tactics suggested that the Red Army would be better served by weapons that were lighter, more compact, simpler to maintain and handle, and chambered for an intermediate cartridge which could fill a niche between the 7.62×25mm and the 7.62×54mm ammunition types already in use. By 1943, this had emerged into the form of the 7.62×39mm cartridge, which was partly inspired by the German 7.92×33mm Kurz. The Red Army's goal was to chamber its future automatic and semi-automatic rifles for this round. Although notably less powerful and less accurate at long range than the hard-hitting 7.62×54mm, the new cartridge was deemed adequate for the typical engagement range of Soviet infantry. Meanwhile, Simonov continued to modify his carbine design. The latest prototype was chambered for the 7.62x39mm round; Simonov also discarded the muzzle brake characteristic of earlier Soviet automatic rifles and added a removable gas cylinder tube. His previous prototypes were loaded by stripper clips fed directly into the fixed magazine through the upper part of the receiver; the redesigned carbine now accepted stripper clips through the forward portion of the bolt. The latest incarnation of Simonov's carbine was accepted for service with the Red Army as the SKS in 1944. An early production run was completed in the spring of that year, and the first SKS carbines were shipped to the 1st Belorussian Front for combat trials shortly afterwards. A military commission appointed by the 1st Belorussian Front praised several qualities of Simonov's design, citing the weapon's low weight and ergonomics, as well as the effectiveness of the folding bayonet. However, the commission also found that the SKS was prone to fouling, and experienced feed problems with the new ammunition as well. Its recommendations were that these flaws be corrected, but the otherwise solid design was acceptable for general army service.

With the end of World War II in May 1945, plans to adopt the SKS for general service with the Red Army were suspended. There was little enthusiasm for acquiring new weapons when the country's arsenals were already filled with vast quantities of surplus arms produced for the war effort. Nevertheless, Simonov continued work on his design, and addressed the technical issues cited by the wartime commission. Large scale serial production of the SKS finally commenced at the Tula Arsenal in 1949, under the designation SKS-45. Serial production of the SKS was also undertaken at the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant in 1953. However, the SKS was already being superseded in some Soviet units by the AK-47, which was chambered for the same 7.62x39mm round. The AK-47 and SKS possessed similar ballistic characteristics, but the former was regarded as having better combat qualities. Serial production of the AK-47 commenced in 1951, and production of the SKS was gradually scaled back as the new rifle began to enter service. Soviet production of the SKS was finally terminated in 1955 after army officials made the decision to standardize all rifle platoons on the AK-47. Those SKS carbines already in service continued to equip various army units until sufficient numbers of AK-47s became available to replace them.

During the mid-1950s, the Soviet government began to export the technical schematics and technology required to produce its small arms, including the SKS, to other socialist governments in the emerging Second World. A key element of premier Nikita Khrushchev's foreign policy was to use transfers of defense technology to strengthen political connections between the Soviet Union and its socialist allies overseas. In 1955, Khrushchev agreed to share the technical schematics of the SKS, AK-47, and the 7.62x39mm ammunition with the People's Republic of China. By 1956, the Chinese government was producing the SKS under license as the Type 56 carbine. Chinese production of the SKS continued for decades and over nine million had been manufactured in that country by the 1980s. Nearly all the Warsaw Pact member states adopted the SKS at one time or another, and technical specifications and licenses to produce the carbine and its ammunition were shared with East Germany and Romania. With the assistance of Soviet or Chinese technicians and generous military grants, armaments factories producing SKS carbines were later established in North Vietnam, North Korea, and Albania.

Service history
The SKS was adopted as the standard infantry weapon of the Soviet Army upon entering mass production in 1949. The initial concept was that the Soviet rifle platoon would be fully equipped with SKS carbines as well as a single RPD light machine gun, both chambered for the same 7.62x39mm cartridge to simplify logistics and allow easy sharing of ammunition. The RPD would serve as a squad automatic weapon and provide covering fire while the remainder of the platoon maneuvered in the face of the enemy. However, Soviet infantry doctrine rapidly evolved in the early 1950s to favor the AK-47, which combined some of the characteristics of both the RPD and the SKS. One of the disadvantages cited with the SKS and RPD-equipped rifle platoon was that the two were very distinct weapons which required separate training and maintenance programs. Soviet military strategists initially hoped that the adoption of the AK-47 (complemented by a more compatible light machine gun derivative) would eliminate the need for this. Additionally, the Soviet Army was intent on adopting a fully automatic rifle with a large magazine capacity, and the SKS was a semi-automatic weapon with a limited magazine capacity of 10 rounds. A proposal was introduced to modify the SKS with larger capacity magazines and make it capable of fully automatic fire. However, with the AK-47 already entering serial production, this measure was considered impractical. Rather than terminate the acquisition and production of the SKS immediately, however, the Soviet general staff continued to phase the SKS into infantry units as an interim solution until sufficient numbers of AK-47s could be produced to replace them. For this brief period between 1949 to 1955, the SKS remained the standard infantry weapon of the Soviet Army, after which it was formally replaced by the AK-47. The carbines were phased out of front-line service, but remained in common use among second-line and reserve units of the Soviet Army for a number of decades. They were finally retired from the Soviet Army and security services in the 1980s.

In Soviet military service, the SKS first saw action with the 1st Belorussian Front in 1944. The weapon was generally well-liked by the Soviet troops for its ergonomics and ease of handling, compared to the much heavier Mosin-Nagant and SVT-40 rifles in service. The permanently affixed folding bayonet also performed well during close quarters combat with German infantry. After the end of World War II in Europe, an unknown quantity of SKS carbines were also supplied to the Soviet 25th Army during its invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, where they were used during the capture of Changchun. In 1956, the Soviet Army was still in the process of phasing the SKS from front-line service, and many of the Soviet units deployed to suppress the 1956 Hungarian Revolution were armed with both AK-47s and SKS carbines.

From 1949 to 1956, Western intelligence sources had virtually no information about the SKS. In 1954, a report prepared by the United States Army Forces in the Far East on Soviet weaponry only made note of the SVT-40, with a possible carbine variant of the same weapon also in service. The much-publicized appearance of the SKS in the Egyptian Army during the Suez Crisis provided the first significant intelligence on the weapon in Western Europe and the United States. In 1955, the Soviet Union had arranged for a massive sale of small arms to Egypt, using Czechoslovakia as an intermediary. Cairo had previously been negotiating with the United States and United Kingdom for more modern arms, but the arms deal reached with the Soviet and Czechoslovak governments brought it into a much closer military relationship with the Eastern Bloc instead. The Egyptian Army had embarked on a massive modernization campaign and was seeking a new self-loading infantry weapon to replace the miscellaneous array of older automatic and semi-automatic rifles in service; as part of the arms sale, the Soviet Union furbished thousands of SKS carbines for this purpose. By 1956 the SKS was the standard self-loading rifle of the Egyptian Army. When the Suez Crisis erupted that year, the French, British, and Israeli military coalition in the Suez frequently encountered Egyptian troops newly equipped with SKS carbines. The Suez Crisis marked the first major use of the SKS as a designated marksman arm; Egyptian sharpshooters armed with the SKS found it was accurate enough at the relatively close ranges of urban combat to inflict severe casualties on Israeli attackers during the Battle of Suez. The Egyptian defenders preferred to target smaller groups of Israeli infantrymen engaged in the street fighting in Suez City, luring them into ambushes where the firepower of the SKS at close quarters could be used to its maximum advantage. A number of the Egyptian carbines were captured by French and British troops before their withdrawal; these were the first examples of the weapon type to fall into the hands of Western intelligence agencies. Much like its tenure in the Soviet Union, the preponderance of the SKS in Egyptian service was short-lived; by 1958 Egypt was manufacturing thousands of AK-47s under license. The AK-47 and its successor, the AKM, became the standard service rifles of the Egyptian Armed Forces, although a few army units continued to be issued with the SKS as late as 1975.

A number were captured by French and British troops during the Suez Crisis.