| UDAR (УДАР) | |
| Origin: | Russia |
| Type: | Revolver |
| Is Ranged: | yes |
| Service: | MVD |
| Designer: | KBP Instrument Design Bureau |
| Design Date: | 1994 |
| Manufacturer: | KBP Instrument Design Bureau |
| Variants: | Udar-S, Udar-TS |
| Weight: | 920 g empty |
| Length: | 173 mm |
| Width: | 44 mm |
| Height: | 134 mm |
| Cartridge: | 12.3x50mmR (UDAR) 12.3x40mmR (UDAR-TS) 12.3x22mmR PM32 (UDAR-S) 9x18mm Makarov, 9x17mm Short (R-92) |
| Action: | Double action |
| Range: | 5 m (Gas- or Liquid-Projection), 10 m (Plastic Baton), 25 m (Bullet) |
| Feed: | 5-round cylinder |
The U-94 UDAR (У-94 "Удар"; the Russian word udar means "Strike" or "Blow"[1]) is a police weapon designed and developed by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau in the early 1990s and first manufactured in 1994.[2] [3] It is a compact double-action revolver that chambers proprietary ammunition in the form of an unusual 12.3mm (0.484" caliber, or 41-gauge)[4] shell. It has a shrouded hammer that can be manually cocked or decocked by use of a cut-out slot at the top of the shroud. It has a side-breaking cylinder that opens to the left and uses a star-ejector to eject all the spent shells at once.
It was originally designed to fire[5] tear gas (CS) aerosol, rubber baton, and rubber buckshot for self-protection or less-than-lethal crowd control. However, it also has jacketed hollow-point and armor-piercing slug shells for self-defense against armed opponents and is reported to take lead shot shells as well.
The weapon has three different-sized cylinders (12.3x22mmR, 12.3x40mmR, and 12.3x50mmR). The bore has been alternately described as 12.5 mm (0.492" caliber), 12.7 mm (.50" caliber), 32-gauge (0.526" caliber [13.36 mm]) or 36-gauge (0.506" caliber [12.85 mm]). All ammunition was made by the Tula Cartridge Works (Tulskiy Patronniy Zavod) and was imprinted with either its civilian ("TPZ") or military ("539") headstamp code.
The design has met with relatively little success to date and failed to catch on with Russian police in the 1990s. They, like the police in most European nations, were used to using semi-automatic pistols rather than revolvers and preferred their larger magazines and quicker reloading times. The need to unload and reload the cylinder and discard partially spent mags when changing ammo types in a crisis situation also made it impractical, it was believed. It has been adopted in some numbers by the MVD though.