Dragunov's Assault Rifle MA

Dragunov participated in the competition that led to the adoption of AKS-74U with a gas-operated design called MA (malogabaritnyj avtomat). Although Dragunov's avtomat was comparable in performance to Kalashnikov's, the latter had the advantage that it shared some parts with the AK-74 rifle already in production. The non-metallic parts of the MA were made of polyamides. The MA was Dragunov's last major design. The trigger mechanism used in the MA was fairly similar to the one previously used in the PP-71 sub-machine gun, which is also attributed to Dragunov.