The Rare, State-Developed SR-1 Vektor: The Russian Service Pistol That Sort-of Was

By Lynndon Schooler

In 1990, the Soviet Ministry of Defense was facing considerable economic strain. It nonetheless was confronted with the fact that its mainline sidearm, the Makarov PM pistol, was an aging, heavy hunk of steel that looked more at home in a 1960’s spy movie, than a pistol of the upcoming new century. The ministry put out a request to replace the Makarov PM, but before substantial development could get underway, the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of failed political and social policy and a heavy military spending burden.

The ministry’s successor, the Ministry of Defense of the newly formed Russian Federation, was in no better economic position and was left with an even worse geopolitical and regional security disaster. The idea of a modern pistol to replace the PM design was one of the few projects not to be placed on the economic chopping block, and so a competition was put forth to bring Russia’s main sidearm into the new millennium.

The Russian Army trial program for the pistol, codenamed “Grach,” attracted the attention of the design team at the well-established цнииточмаш (aka “TsNIITOChMASh” in English, the Russian Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building) which developed the “snub nosed viper”—the Gyurza. This dramatic name was visually fitting for the 1990s-designed SPS (Serdyukov self-loading pistol), which was created at the initial Soviet request in the years prior and was an early contender in the ill-fated attempt to unseat the prolific PM. In 1993, Piotr Serdyukov’s design would eventually be renamed the “Vektor,” as part of Russia’s introduction to the attractive naming conventions in a capitalistic state.

Yet, in the sunset of the Soviet Union, when the Gyurza round was not yet in the Vektor days, two men and one woman went to work on the future cartridge with which all Soviet soldiers (at least those outfitted with a pistol) were intended to be equipped. E.S. Kornilova, A.B. Yuryev and I.P. Kasyanov at TsNIITOCh-MASh had to create a bespoke and enhanced cartridge to meet the initial state requirements. The pistol would have to be more powerful than the PM, with an effective range no less than 50 meters, with the ability to defeat body armor at 100 meters. This was a tall order. Their answer was the 9×21. However, when the cartridge was modernized after the state’s collapse and thousands of former Soviet citizens found themselves without work, only Yuryev remained on the design team.

The cartridge was intended to be standard issue, but in practice the 9×21 cartridge was built from the ground up to be special purpose ammunition. As a result, it was and remains comparatively expensive compared to standard 9×19 and 9×18 cartridges. Immediately, this created a shortage in availability, precluding intensive training from anyone apart from special forces units and spooky agencies. The round had an armor piercing variant, the SP-10, a full metal jacket ball round, the SP-11, a reduced ricochet variant, the SP-12, and a tracer, the SP-13. The SP-10 armor-piercing round is a 103-grain projectile with a muzzle velocity of 1,300 feet per second. It carries 563 Joules or 415 foot pounds of muzzle energy. Per the state requirement, the SP-10 armor-piercing round is capable of defeating class IIIA at 50 meters.

Despite the new and improved cartridge and the slick name “Vektor,” the pistol was rejected by the Russian Army. Instead, the Izh-mash entry won the competition, called the MP-443 “Grach” (named for the competition itself) in 9×19, designed by Vladimir Yarygin. Soldiers called it the “PYa,” an abbreviation of “P,” for “pistol” and “Ya,” for “Yarygin.” Their Grach pistol entered production in 2003. While the Russian army was against the Vektor design, it attracted the attention of other Russian authorities and saw a second chance at life in the hands of Russian law enforcement and intelligence services. It was expeditiously put into production in 1996 and adopted by the FSB in the same year. The name “Vektor” was dropped in favor of the stoic SR-1, the “SR” meaning “special development” in Russian. Russian armament authorities, the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, designate it with the less slick name “GRAU 6P53.”

In function, the Vektor is a short, recoil-operated, locked-breech pistol, with an 18-round, double-stack magazine. The barrel locking is achieved by a tilting locking block, located under the barrel. A polymer frame houses the double-action trigger, which features a trigger safety similar to that on the Glock. The pistol features a grip safety and finally a firing pin safety in the slide. The double-action mode of fire will work only if the hammer is in the half-cocked position.

In 2003, the design was modernized to the SR-1M, with a strengthened polymer frame and improved ergonomics. Another modernized variant is the SR-3MP, which features an M1913 rail adapter and threaded barrel for a sound suppressor. Recently, this author had the opportunity to inspect an SR-1M in late 2018 while visiting Chechnya. Unfortunately, he was not able to shoot it, due to the pistol’s infamous ammunition unavailability; the author was later told that if this were an FSB (Federal Security Service) unit there would be no issue with ammunition availability. A Special Forces instructor presented his pistol to me, and at his request, I was not able to photograph the weapon with the serial number visible. This is why the photo has it obstructed from view. In the hand, the pistol feels and handles well with ease of manipulation and fire control access. Coming in line with the eye, it has standard low-profile sights, and the crisp trigger is complimented by a short trigger pull and clean reset.

In the end, Grach was adopted as the standard issue Russian service pistol and for the last two decades as well; however, the PM is still in wide use in conflict zones around the world. Despite their best efforts, the world of Russian combat pistols remains a mixed bag—the SR-1M alongside the PM on the same fighting team. The Spetsnaz instructors, with whom this author spoke, indicated that the idea of a pistol with increased armor-defeating capability is very useful for their applications, but limited ammo had negatively affected their ability to train as rigorously as they demand. As for this author, all I could attest to was the feel of the gun. It was well-machined with a slick action. It was a typical TsNIITOChMAsh product. Someday, the author hopes to get his hands on that precious ammunition and put some rounds downrange.