The Unique Story of an Iraqi Designated DMR

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Opening a seldom used bottom drawer, I began to shuffle things around in my search. As I moved the top layer of “stuff,” my hand suddenly stopped on a black zippered case. My digging came to an abrupt end. This was not what I was looking for, but it suddenly brought back memories leading me to pause my hunt. The plain looking black case had sat forgotten for years in a drawer of assorted Combloc binoculars and scopes. This Russian scope was different from the others though; it had gone to Iraq, served on a Tabuk 7.62x39mm DMR and then come home. Walking out of my gunroom I sat on my couch and looked inside the case. A note from LTC Kendrick McCormick was folded on top:

Dave,

Thought I would throw in a few extras with this box to thank you once again for helping me out with the training over in Iraq.…The decal is the marking 5th Brigade, 2nd National Police Division used on their gun trucks. It has “POB” on it because they used to be known as the Public Order Brigade. Seems they didn’t see the need to change their vehicle markings with the name change. But then, they didn’t see the need to change a bunch of things….Thanks again for the help. Good Luck and be careful over there this summer. Let me know how it all goes.

Sincerely, Kendrick McCormick

Beneath the note was a Russian 6x42mm PSO type scope in a medical wrap to camouflage it. The wrap was old and dirty but the scope itself is still in excellent shape. Looking out my office window the image has the typical yellowish tint older Russian optics are known for. The reticle is the SVD style, but it has a split choke rangefinder delineated for a .5- and 1.5-meter height targets indicating it was made for the commercial sporting market. So, what is its story?

It’s amazing how fast time goes by. It has been almost 20 years since LTC McCormick first contacted me. He was deployed to Iraq as things grew progressively worse there prior to “the Surge” in 2007. He and his men were tasked with working with the Iraqi Police (IP) and while equipping and training them he came across a number of “long barreled” AK rifles. He recognized these to be Iraqi-built Tabuk designated marksman rifles (DMR) chambered in the standard 7.62x39mm.

McCormick decided to do some testing to check their performance to see if they were suitable for fielding by the Iraqi Police he was working with. He had one problem though, they lacked optical sights. For a variety of reasons, sourcing the proper optic locally was not possible. I had written a bit about Kalashnikovs and SVDs at the time, so he contacted me and we exchanged ideas and information. I shipped a 6x42mm PSO scope to him in Iraq, and he mounted it up and got to work.

If you are not familiar with Iraq’s Tabuk DMR, let me pause our story and delve into this interesting member of the Kalashnikov family. We have to turn the pages of time back to the Global War on Terror and travel to turbulent Iraq. During this dangerous time, US troops and Coalition Forces faced a variety of threats including Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIEDs), suicide bombers, and snipers.

When most people think of sniper/DMR type rifles fielded by insurgents in Iraq, during this time period, rifles like the Soviet SVD, Romanian PSL, and domestic Iraqi Al Kadesih come to mind. While these 7.62x54mmR models were certainly prolific, there was another designated marksman rifle encountered, the Tabuk. Little known in the US, what makes this particular weapon interesting is the fact that it’s a 7.62x39mm Kalashnikov-based DMR produced in Iraq.

The Tabuk is a long-barreled Kalashnikov DMR variant of the Yugoslav M72 RPK produced at the Al-Qadissiya Establishments. The Al-Qadissiya Establishment is located on the road between Doura and Mussayeb, north of Baghdad in what was the Diyala Governorate. The sprawling facility covers some eight square kilometers. A quick visual examination of the Tabuk though reveals it was not a product of Iraqi small arms engineers. The obvious Yugoslav influence is due to the fact the Tabuk was produced in Iraq on Zastava Arms machinery. There is a definite link between this Iraqi rifle and Serb engineers in Kragujevac.

If we look closer, we note Iraqi-Yugoslavia relations dates back to 1958 when Iraq’s first president, Muhammad Najib ar-Ruba’I, established relations with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then under the rule of Josip Broz Tito. Tito first visited Iraq in August 1967, and then again in February 1979 while Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was President of Iraq. The two countries signed bilateral relations agreements on trade, economic and technical cooperation.

It should be understood that Tito, together with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, laid the foundations for the Non-Aligned Movement of countries not allied with either the East or West. Tito looked for non-aligned third-world countries to do business with, and Iraq became an important partner. At its peak, mutual trade between the two countries reached 4 billion in US dollars.

Yugoslav companies built Iraq’s only deep water port, the Umm Qasr Port, which was founded in 1961, and reduced Iraq’s dependence on the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway that marks the border with Iran. In 1977, al-Bakr ordered the construction of a large munitions and explosives factory 15 kilometers south of Yusufiyah. This was built by Yugoslav and German companies and completed just before the Iran-Iraq War began on 22 September 1980. Prior to this, on 16 July 1979, Saddam Hussein became the fifth President of Iraq and he expanded their trade. To give an idea of the scale of Yugoslav help, some 100,000 Yugoslav workers had to leave the country when the war began. Later in the 1980s, Yugoslav engineers also built large numbers of deep underground bunkers, which would later be used during the Gulf War.

Returning to our story, the equipment and tooling to produce the Tabuk is believed to have been purchased from Zastava Arms by Saddam Hussein’s government while Slobodan Milosevic was in power in Serbia. The design was obviously manufactured with assistance from the engineers at Zastava. I believe it is possible they were even assembled using some Zastava components.

The rifle itself is based upon the Yugoslav M70 series, and here I must note the Yugoslavs marched to the beat of their own drum. The M70 is not a Soviet pattern Kalashnikov design. Due to this, the Tabuk features a heavier RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova or Kalashnikov’s hand-held machine gun) type receiver and trunnion. So, the Tabuk can be considered an RPK, not AKM (Avtomat Kalashnikova modernizirovanny or Kalashnikov’s Automatic Rifle Modernized), variant. Due to its M72 RPK “squad automatic” heritage, the Tabuk is built on a 1.5mm thick stamped steel receiver with a reinforced trunnion area. This is noticeably heavier compared to the standard 1mm thick receiver as utilized on the AKM.

It’s also important to note the fire control parts in the Tabuk are slightly different. Due to its DMR role, it has a two-position selector (safe and fire) and fires in the semi-automatic mode only. There is no full-automatic position. This was done to prevent a rifleman from damaging the barrel with full-automatic fire. It also shows this rifle was intended for aimed fire, not spray and pray.

The Tabuk is fitted with a fairly light profile barrel which, including the flash suppressor, is 23.6-inches long. Although not as handy as a shorter barreled AKM, the longer barrel does have an advantage in this role. Muzzle velocity is boosted from approximately 2,330 fps from a 16-inch barrel AKM, to a listed 2,427 fps for the Tabuk. The result is a slightly flatter trajectory and slightly less wind drift. The barrel is not chrome-lined and has a one turn in 9.4-inches rifling twist.

Pinned onto the barrel is a front sight block with a standard AK type sight post. The front sight is adjustable for windage and elevation when zeroing the weapon. The muzzle features the standard Soviet left-hand 14x1mm-thread pattern. The muzzle device is a long birdcage-type flash suppressor, which looks identical to that used on the 7.62x54R Al Kadesih sniper rifle. A standard RPK type tangent rear sight is mounted. The RPK sight differs from an AKM sight by being easily adjustable for windage corrections.

Furniture consists of a wood fore-end, upper handguard, and a skeletonized buttstock. To lighten the weapon, the center section of the buttstock is cutout. The stock is notched to accept an SVD type removable cheekpiece. Plus, a thin rubber buttpad is mounted. The pistol grip is a black plastic piece similar to that used on the Zastava M70 series. Overall length of the weapon is 43.7 inches and it weighs 9.9 pounds with optic and an empty magazine. Feed is from standard 7.62x39mm Kalashnikov magazines. Although a 20-round magazine would allow a rifleman to assume a lower prone position, the Tabuk will accept 30- and 40-round magazines as well as 75-round drums. In doing so, it allows anyone in the rifle squad to provide spare magazines to the designated marksman.

As this model is intended to be utilized primarily with an optical sight, a scope rail is riveted and welded to the left side of the receiver. This allows any day/night optic with a standard Combloc-pattern side mount to be easily affixed. Commonly encountered scopes include the Romanian IOR 4x24mm six-degree Type 2s, Russian and Chinese 4x24mm PSO-1s, and Yugoslav ZRAK ON-M76s. These are all fairly similar in design, operation, as well as performance, and perform acceptably well at the relatively short ranges this rifle is most effective at. However, as all these scopes feature an elevation turret with a bullet drop compensator (BDC), it is important to have the correct 7.62x39mm-calibrated scope. If a standard 7.62x54mmR calibrated scope is utilized, the BDC will not match the trajectory of the less powerful round.

A true designated marksman rifle, the Tabuk was designed to complement a 7.62x39mm AKM armed rifle squad/platoon. It was intended to put a longer barreled optically sighted weapon in the hands of a rifleman with advanced marksmanship training. In doing so, it would allow the designated marksman, with his magnified optic, to locate and identify targets that were hard or impossible to see with the naked eye. He could then engage targets with aimed (rather than precision) fire at greater distances than the average rifleman was capable of.

Rather than acting as a sniper, the designated marksman would act in a fire support role, similar to the RPK gunner, during both attack and defense. His optically sighted rifle would give him an advantage when spotting, identifying and engaging targets at medium ranges. Typically, Eastern Bloc-trained designated marksmen received marksmanship training out to 400 meters. They were then expected to refine their skills once at their unit.

To see just what a Tabuk is capable of, LTC Kendrick McCormick conducted testing while serving in Iraq. The rifle was in unfired condition, but as was common, it was missing both its scope and cheekpiece. To make the rifle serviceable, I shipped him a Russian 6x42mm scope. Once he had the scope, he proceeded to fabricate a simple, yet effective, cheek rest. He then conducted accuracy testing prone off sandbags at 100 meters.

Test ammunition was Chinese-produced steel core ball ammunition manufactured by Factory 9141 in 1979. He specifically selected Chinese ammunition over Iraqi, or any other Middle Eastern-produced ammunition, as it is usually both more accurate and reliable. Middle Eastern-produced ammunition encountered in Iraq, in this time period, was typically of very poor quality in my experience.

Although members of the Kalashnikov family don’t have a reputation for being particularly accurate, he found this individual example capable of posting consistent two-inch five-shot groups at 100 meters. Testing was also performed in various positions including sitting and offhand. After familiarizing himself with the weapon, he felt hitting a man-sized target at 400 meters would be well within its capabilities. It should be noted that during testing, this older lot of ammunition did not perform with 100% reliability. Due to this, extraction and ejection were not completely reliable. In reviewing a video he taped and sent me, it was obvious some fired cases barely made it out of the weapon.

Design Strengths Include:

1. Operates the same as any member of the AK family, so very easy to train on.
2. Reliable when fed quality ammunition.
3. Very robust.
4. Capable of acceptable accuracy for urban fighting.
5. Feeds from a standard 7.62x39mm AK pattern magazine.
6. Utilizes common 7.62x39mm ammunition.
7. Fast recovery time between shots.
8. Capable of laying down aimed fire at a high rate to suppress enemy fire.

Weak Points Include:

1. Poor accuracy at extended distances.
2. 7.62x39mm cartridge possesses poor exterior ballistics.
3. No match- or sniper-grade ammunition available in this caliber.
4. Poor penetration at extended distances.
5. Unable to penetrate Level III hard plates even with AP loads.
6. Stands out indicating the marksman as an important target.

LTC Kendrick McCormick returned safely. In July 2007, I went to Iraq as an embedded journalist during “The Surge,” when President Bush deployed more than 20,000 soldiers to Iraq in his “The New Way Forward.” There, I had the chance to see US AMU (Army Marksmanship Unit)-built 5.56x45mm squad designated marksman rifles (SDM-R) in action. 240 of these were provided to the 3rd Infantry Division and were informally known as the “AMU rifle.”

Looking back today, almost 20 years later, the AMU built SDM-R is long out of service and the Tabuk is a relic of the past which makes for an interesting piece for collectors to clone. The scope which now sits on my desk? It is a reminder of days of high adventure from long ago.

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Acknowledgments: Thanks to LTC Kendrick McCormick for making this article possible. 

TABUK RIFLE SPECS

• Operation: Kalashnikov long stroke gas system with rotating bolt, semi-auto only
• Caliber: 7.62x39mm
• Barrel Length: 23.6 in. including flash suppressor
• Overall Length: 43.7 in.
• Weight: 9.9 lbs. with optic and empty magazine
• Feed: Standard 7.62x39mm AK detachable box magazine
• Front Sight: AK post, adjustable for elevation/windage when zeroing
• Rear Sight: RPK rear tangent calibrated from 100–1,000 meters, adjustable for windage
• Day Optic: ZRAK 4x ON-M76 most common
• Velocity: 2,427 fps with Iraqi ball
• Practical Effective Range: 500 meters
• Manufacturer: Al-Qadissiya Establishments

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