Aregular blowback 9mm pistolcaliber carbine is lazy and kinda lame. Chonky bolts, heavy springs, and bad suppressed. But they’re also easy to make, which goes a long way to explain their proliferation. Grand Power’s first venture into the PCC arena was the Stribog SP9A1 (see RECOIL Issue 42), and yup, it has simple blowback operation. The roller-delayed followup, the Stribog SP9A3, hit American shores at the beginning of 2020.
Here we have the latest, the SP9A3-S; the “S” is for “short.” In this case, the barrel is just 5.5 inches long with a lonely single M-LOK slot on either side of the handguard. At barely over a foot long (12.5 inches), the Stribog SP9A3-S moves from the PDW category to “compact PDW.”
FEATURES & UPDATES
Aesthetically, you won’t notice too many exterior differences between the SP9A1 and SP9A3, with the exception of the stubby barrel of the SP9A3-S — same boxy extruded aluminum receiver, AR-ish two-pin trigger module, and replaceable fixed ejector. Plus, the nice integral flip-up
