Ukrainian Defense Forces Received Ukrainian Sniper Rifles with Polymer Jacketed Ammunition

The Ukrainian company Horizon’s Lord LLC has handed over to the Ukrainian Defense Forces a batch of 12.7×114HL sniper rifles with high-precision polymer jacketed ammunition.

Horizon’s Lord announced this on its Facebook page.

Judging by the photos, this batch consisted of six large-caliber sniper rifles and at least several hundred rounds of ammunition. This indicates mass production of both rifles and innovative ammunition.

Polymer casings can reduce the weight of small arms ammunition by several tens of percent, which is a significant problem, especially for large-caliber weapons. However, despite the development of polymer ammunition, which has been going on since the 1950s, it has not been widely used.

The development of polymer-cased ammunition by the Horizon’s Lord became known in January 2025. At that time, the company announced the completion of research and development work.

The unique 12.7×114HL cartridge of Ukrainian design is a 12.7 mm (.50 BMG) bullet in a re-compressed 14.5×114 mm cartridge case from the KPVT machine gun. The length of the round is 16 cm.

The large amount of gunpowder in the Soviet-style machine gun cartridge case allowed the heavy bullet to accelerate to high speed and transfer enough energy to it for a stable flight at a distance of over 2000 meters.

However, according to the company, the mass production of 12.7×114HL ammunition was severely limited due to the difficulty of obtaining 14.5×114 brass casings in Ukraine. Therefore, to solve this problem, the manufacturer engaged leading Ukrainian specialists working with high-strength polymers.

Although the cartridges were designed as disposable, most of the fired polymer cartridges were reloaded after a small crimping of the bottom part.

“Now we can say with certainty: there will be a lot of 12.7×114HL ammunition!” Horizon’s Lord said at the time.

The Horizon’s Lord sniper rifles are available in single-shot and magazine versions and weigh 15.7 kg or 17.0 kg respectively. The length of the rifle is 1.82 meters when deployed, and 1.5 meters when the stock is folded.

With this rifle in November 2023, Ukrainian sniper Vyacheslav Kovalskyi and his partner set a new world sniper record, eliminating a Russian invader at a distance of 3,800 meters.