VHS Assault Rifle - Design

Design

The VHS-D rifle is 765 mm long, with a 500 mm barrel. the whole rifle body is is a monoblock construction made from high-impact polymer. Externally, it strongly resembles the French FAMAS rifle, but both its functioning mechanism and disassembling mode are quite different.

The VHS-K is a carbine variant with a shorter, 400-mm barrel, resulting in overall length of 665 mm.

The early project won the iKA innovation prize for their interesting feature,

Some characteristics of the rifle are still not revealed to the public and so some misconceptions occurred through the development period: there was word about a sort of recoil buffer in the form of a venting system that recovered part of the gases generated by the shot and pushed it back in a space located behind the bolt; during the cycle, the bolt would thus "bounce" on a sort of "gas cushion" that acted as a buffer, dramatically reducing recoil. That provoked more than a disappointment as the production-stage VHS was reported to operate in a much conventional manner no longer utilizing these buffering system. According to the project deposited at the European Patent Office however it seems that such voices originated from a misconception of related data, i.e. merging in one two different features: a forced air ventilation system similar to the one in Pecheneg machine gun and a mechanical buffer reductor, similar in conception but not identical to the one used in Ultimax 100, a weapon Croatia used in Croatian War of Independence and still has in its reserve inventory.

Same patent states also that Vehesica works neither through Direct gas impingement nor through a short or long stroke piston, but through a 'tappet' type of closed gas system much like the FN SCAR.

There it was also another precedent design sporting some of said features, but it was rejected after the first real testing, so it is also possible that the"gas cushion" was instead a feature of that former model.

Taking into account that said patent is from 2007, it is not certain how much the serial production rifles will differ from it, but nevertheless it shows that HS Produkt, which also developed and produced the best selling HS2000 pistol, has the ability to adapt and combine existing features in an innovative way.

Also the recent Croatian combat experience influenced the rifle project: VHS is probably the only modern assault rifle to have standard integral sights for using both a grenade launcher and rifle grenades.