AK-12 Rifle Discussion

Increasing funding for the military is relevant to the thread... these new rifles will not be free, and of course their design that allows the attachment of optics means further costs too in terms of those optics.

More compact and better equipped forces make sense.

An east european purchase of AK12s would be a political thing most likely but I suspect if they have a small arms industry they would be locally produced rather than bought.

The AK above is just a cosmetic change that would be the cheapest option.

The buttstock removed and replaced, the top cover and front hand grips removed and replaced... and that is pretty much all it is.

Cheap and easy but basically the same rifle that is able to have gadgets fitted easily plus a length adjustable stock.

In the AK12 range however you get the benefit of real changes with the addition of a three round burst capability the more important improvements include ambidextrous selector/safety, the ability to cycle the weapon with the safety on so you don't have to take off the safety to remove or insert a round into/from the chamber. The ability to swap the side for the cocking handle means no more reach overs to prepare the weapon. Improved accuracy with newer rifling design, fully closed receiver so less dirt gets into the mechanism, fully "railed", bolt hold open feature, ability to use standard NATO rifle grenades from the muzzle... all in a rifle not radically different from the original.

Here is a pick of the "russian calibre" AK family, with (from top to bottom) The AK12 rifle (AK-74M), Ak-12 Carbine (AK-105), AK12 short barrel (AKS-74U), AK12 rifle with under barrel grenade launcher (AK-74M w/GP30) and RPK12 LMG (RPK-74).

The Russian military doesn't seem to feel that it's worth the cost though, and they would just keep the old rifle and update it.

I don't think it has made any decisions yet.

After it has tested the AK12 it will need to decide whether to buy new, buy some new and upgrade the rest or upgrade and not buy new.

Personally I think they will go for a mix because I suspect the special forces will prefer the AK12 to any upgrade and cost will be much less of an issue as even an expensive AK will be a quarter of the cost of a cheap western alternative.

I think it all pretty much comes down to how much the next generation weapons will cost, and if they require some new calibres then the cost might be fairly significant.

Having said that their performance should also be rather significantly better too, though there is no guarantee... as we have seen in the US for years they have dabbled in replacement rifles for the M16 and after multiple competitions they generally ended up deciding the small improvement in performance didn't justify the cost.

[quot]As for the picture above, those variants are just photoshops of what proposed models they will make. [/quote]

As someone who uses photoshop to visualise new weapons I can say that these are actually official photos AFAIK.

Would like to see a Vityaz-SN in AK12 format... the revised cocking handle and selector positioned for thumb operation should result in a Russian weapon that is competitive with the MP5 in terms of handling and ergonomics, but presumably cheaper and part of a family of weapons already in Russian use... from SMG through short, carbine, and rifle barrel length assault rifle calibre to standard rifle calibre (DMR) and LMG and perhaps even GPMG as well.

Nice find.

I rather doubt that the Russian military would adopt these civilian front sights or the M16 style muzzle brake... in fact I rather doubt they will even bother with the different mag well design for the military weapons.

The weight added by the new design mag well is probably saved by not having a post front sight mount.

The 12 gauge model looks interesting too, but its pistol grip and folding stock will make it hard to own here in NZ.

Hopefully they will also develop a very civilian version with no pistol grip like they did with the Saigas... an adjustable length stock with an adjustable cheek piece can stay but not folding.

In the US we can have the folding and collasiple stock, it just can't come into the country that way, it has to be added on later by the importer and a required number of US parts to comply.

Now that Russia is joining the WTO I really can't see how US laws regarding US components on imported rifles can remain in effect as they violate the whole concept of free trade.

If it has to be imported with a fixed stock then they need to develop one... not that hard to do... just take away the button that allows the stock to fold should suffice.

If the user then wants to pay for after market folding stocks then that is up to them.

From a Russian perspective however getting it into the country as a civilian rifle should be the goal.

I've read that moving the front sight assembly over to the gas block makes the rifle balance better.

Not really sure where you read that, but I rather doubt moving the front sight would effect the balance of the rifle in comparison to fitting an under barrel grenade launcher, a suppressor or optics... even a front pistol grip will all change the balance of the weapon rather more than the shift of the front iron sight.

Ironically a criticism of the AK was that its sight radius was too short for accuracy, and now there are claims it should be shorter for "balance".

Sometimes I think most western gun experts really don't know what they want.

Also, I believe it makes it easier to have a longer muzzle brake,suppressor, or rifle grenade launcher because the front sight assembly isn't in the way.

Easier in what way? The AK12 muzzle attachment is already very long, the position of the front iron sight has no effect on its length. The standard Russian underbarrel grenade launcher is not effected by the front iron sights of the rifle because it has its own self contained iron sights to the side of the rifle.

The only negative effect is that a suppressor would not be able to be of the over barrel type to reduce the overall length of the weapon when fitted... and most grunts wont be using suppressors anyway.

So the sight being on the gas block is a feature I hope they have in the military model.

I rather doubt it. For civilian use with an over barrel suppressor it makes sense but for the Russian military it makes no difference.

The Russian military always said they wanted a rifle that had very accurate and controllable bursts of fire to increase hit probablity in combat.

Which suggests that a good muzzle brake and a forward mass like a front iron sight post would be positive things.

Of course the whole purpose of all the upgrades is to add pic rails, which one suspects is so that optics can be introduced easily and widely, so another option could be detachable front iron sights... or folding ones...

To my knowledge, no military launches rifle grenades from the muzzle anymore. The Russians themselves stopped this practice, and so did the Americans. They use grenade launchers now.

Still used in some places and still NATO standard for rifle grenades.

Rifle grenades have a few advantages over GLs, including larger payload. Modern ones allow standard ammo to be used and shoot through the grenade.

This is only possible when the front sight is combined with the gas block.

Why?

BTW I know of plenty of suppressors that extend back behind the muzzle, but I am not aware of any muzzle brakes that do the same.

If the barrel is too long then buy the carbine version, or fold the stock.

Personally I would prefer the longer barrel.

I have an AK and an SLR and I really don't see much difference in terms of balance as to where the front iron sight goes. Put a grenade launcher and a suppressor on and I doubt the shift would make any noticeable difference at all.

BTW Muzzle brakes are legal here in NZ but flash hiders are not, so the AK12 would get in but with an M16 style flash hider it would not... very simply you buy an AK12 because you want an AK... if you want a Valmet then buy a Valmet... they are still making them.

The AK-200 had fold down iron sights which would also do the job:

Would be a shame if a tank just rolled right over it.

Funny, I've waited so many years to get my hands on a Vepr-12, now that I've finally got one, they're making a damn AK-12 12/76. Guess I better start saving up.

Just looking at the two drawings... pretty much everything is the same except the barrel calibre and the magazine type... perhaps when they are introduced they will be fully modular so you can buy calibre kits and swap them between calibres including 223, 545, 7.62x39, grendal, etc and shotgun calibres in the light rifle, and 7.62 x 51mm in the heavy rifle model?

Just looking at the drawings, if you make the barrel removable that includes the front iron sight and therefore the gas tube into the front of the gas system, then for the different calibres you can have different sized gas holes so the pressure on the rifles gas system can be about the same for the very different cartridges, and then all you need is a different bolt face and a different magazine for the different calibres.

By including the front sight with the barrel in the calibre kit you can zero the weapons using the front sight so that you can zero all your barrels independently to a battle setting of say 300m.

One of the main problems with the M60 machinegun was that its front sight was fixed so that once you had fired a bit and needed to change barrels in combat you had to rezero the new barrel using the rear sight... there was simply no chance to do that so your fire suddenly got less accurate.

Having a front sight that can be zeroed means each barrel can be zeroed to a specific range (obviously you wouldn't zero a 12 guage barrel to 300m).

Of course most times you will change calibre is a hunter or a special forces soldier and the reason you will change calibre is for different shooting environments.

For instance shooting out in open territory a 5.45mm is a flat shooting accurate round, but in urban combat in a built up area over much shorter ranges you might want to try 7.62 x 39mm ammo because it penetrates cover better and is accurate enough over shorter ranges and makes a bigger hole in the target.

For a hunter you might be in heavy bush and want to shoot pigs, but get to a clearing and see some rabbits 200m away.

7.62 x 39mm is good for pig shooting, but for a 200m shot at rabbits you would be better off with a .223 or 5.45mm calibre round.

Or on hills looking for goats and you get to a gully full of scrub full of rabbits you might want to swap 7.62 x 39mm for a 12 gauge.

Speaking of which I was looking at a MP-18MH on the makers website http://imzcorp.com/en/company/34.html and I noticed that it mentions that the weapon can be delivered with scope mounts and smoothbore barrels with chokes.

I was therefore wondering if anyone has bought an MP-18MH with extra barrels?

If you can buy them that way I would definitely be interested in a rifle with a 7.62 x 39mm barrel, a 12 gauge barrel, and probably a 243 barrel or perhaps a 5.45mm barrel.

I like the idea of a simple and cheap weapon you can take apart and put in a backpack, and the flexibility of being able to carry extra barrels for different calibres appeals too.

Or maybe I will wait for the AK-12.

Hmm, have they ever released a parts diagram for the AK-12?

Not one that I am aware of...

Pretty much. As long as the hand guard isn't a pain to remove, the swap shouldn't take long.

Lower hand guards on standard AKs come off easy enough... just strip the rifle so there is no piston rod through the gas system and then lift gas tube release lever and lift away the top gas tube and then look near the barrel there is a small lever that you turn 90 degrees to unlock the lower stock which can then be pushed off.

Of course on this design removing the gas tube might allow the barrel to be turned 90 degrees and unlocked from the receiver with the lower stock attached with some sort of latch.

Wouldn't need to be too complicated.

The spring will probably have to be switched out though if you go from something like 5.45 to 12 gauge.

The recoil spring on a Saiga in 12 gauge looks very similar to the recoil spring on an AK in 7.62 x 39mm... I rather suspect you could get away with the same spring and mechanism, but with a different amount of gas.

Another issue may develop with caliber swaps if the AK-12 has a last round bolt hold open feature, I haven't looked but it probably does. I would imagine this could be challenging to get to work reliably with different calibers.

I would expect that wouldn't be an issue. To put it simply it would work by having a probe like pin or other protrusion, and from the position of the bolt carrier release (directly behind the magazine) I would suspect a small wedge poking from the rear into the mag well area. With a loaded magazine the round at the top of the mag will block the wedge from moving forward so the mechanism will operate normally... when the last round is fired the wedge will move forward into the empty space where the next round should have been which blocks the bolt carrier and holds it to the rear. The SKS had something similar, so it is not particularly new.

Regarding the MP-18MH it would be interesting if they added multi barrel options too, like .22 and shotgun calibre combinations as well as centrefire combination guns too.

I've always needed a rubber mallet to rotate the release lever for the gas tube on all my AKs. Maybe I'm just unlucky.

On my Chinese Type 56S it is pretty loose and it is only the presence of the gas tube above it that stops it from moving.

The point however is that this lever only prevents the lower hand guard from being removed... it is a bit of a large step from that to removing the actual barrel of the rifle and they will need a fairly substantial method of attachment there to ensure it is solid and secure.

They're very similar in appearance, however, I run a lighter spring when I use low brass target loads and definitely get more reliability vs. the factory spring. I'll have to compare a factory 7.62 spring with the factory 12 gauge spring on the range sometime. IMO, using a universal spring for everything from 5.45 to 7.62 may work by varying gas alone, but it might not be as consistent some shooters like.

Adding a recoil spring to the calibre set would not be the end of the world and might make the system even more flexible... perhaps adding heavy pistol calibres and/or certain subsonic calibres like 9 x 39mm.

Functionally, the bolt hold open feature works as you described. The problems will start showing up when rounds start switching sizes and magazines need to change shape to accommodate them. Don't get me wrong it can be done and done well, Izhmash are more than capable enough.

Here's a pic of the vepr-12's factory installed BHO, it's the black angled tab that sticks out over the magazine. I think the saiga type 30's have the same setup also.

The point is that no matter what the calibre or magazine shape the bolt carrier goes through the same place and the ammo in the mags needs to be in the same position to be collected and loaded into the chamber, so whether it is 7.62 x 39mm or 12 gauge, or .223 the tab that either gets pushed up by the top round in the mag and allows the bolt carrier to run through to load it, or it sags down touching the mag follower and blocks the bolt carrier and holds it "open" it shouldn't need that much modification if any to do its job.

It works great, only once it failed to catch out of the 300 rounds I've put through it so far. Anyways, to my disappointment it appears the AK-12 doesn't have a last round bolt hold open feature. Three seconds in

Not the end of the world... my SLR has a manual bolt hold open device and for situations where I want the bolt to stay back to keep the mechanism open it is fine. Replacing the mag and releasing the mechanism is easy, but it really is not that big a deal to have to replace the mag and cock the mechanism right back and then to release the handle to load the weapon... especially when the cocking handle is in a handy place or can be moved to a handy place.

My opinion is that a BHO would not practical in the AK-12, as it's constrained by having to be compatible with the original magazines.

Which assumes that auto BHO systems must all rely on specific types of magazines. Some of them certainly do... that Yugo model you already mentioned is a good example... and a useless implimentation because if it relies on the mag when you remove the mag to reload the mechanism slams shut so what would be the point of special mags except to indicate the mag is empty?

The point is to make reloading quicker... like on a pistol, so you drop the empty mag and load a full mag and push the slide release button which is easier than racking the slide back and releasing it to reload.

Don't think a caliber swap would be possible from a shotgun to centerfire rifle or vice versa.

Why?

Apart from the obvious barrel diameter issues, the shotgun saiga-12 and Saiga rifles in rifle calibres both are centre fire rounds that cycle the same way using the same mechanism. The Saiga-12 has a larger ejection port, but look at the drawings of the ejection port for the AK12. The magazine size is also different and obviously the bolt face will need to be different to handle the different cartridge cases... but those are the same problems you have to deal when converting the action between different rifle calibres.

AK shotguns are quite different mechanically.

Actually, no, they are not. A shotgun fires a very large mass or normally smaller projectiles at relatively low speed, while a rifle fires a smaller lighter projectile at much higher speeds, but in terms of recoil and energy they are actually rather similar.

Technically speaking, I think you could get away with the AK-12 in .308 being convertable to all common rifle calibers, it's just the rifle would be oversized when it's in the smaller calibers.

Technically you probably could, but as you mention it would not be efficient to do so as you would end up with a heavy overbuilt rifle if you tried to make it an every calibre weapon including full power battle rifle capable.

I rather suspect they would have two rifle types... a light rifle for assault rifle calibres and shotgun calibres and a heavy rifle for battle rifle calibres and heavy shotgun calibres.

Examples of light rifle and shotgun calibres would include 7.62 x 39mm, 5.45 x 39mm, 5.56 x 45mm, Grendel, and that new US 6.8mm round, plus perhaps the new Chinese calibre too, and in terms of shotgun calibres for sporting use I would go for 20 gauge, and 12 gauge.

For the heavy rifle they have only mentioned 7.62 x 51mm for the military model and I have speculated on a 6 x 49mm or new replacement for the 7.62 x 54mm, but for the civilian model I would expect the 7.62 x 54mm plus the 30-06 and probably 12 gauge with 3 1/2 inch shells and of course a 10 gauge option perhaps too.
The question is... will the heavy rifle be heavy enough to go to .300LM and .338LM and perhaps the 12.7 x 55mm rounds they are talking about.

Changable barrels would be nice, but it's not something I'm crossing my fingers for.

For a civilian hunter the advantage of different calibres is that they just need one weapon that can perform a wider range of tasks. A multi calibre rifle will be more expensive than a standard rifle, but a multi calibre rifle with 4 calibre sets will be cheaper than the 4 rifles you would need to get the same job done.

I suspect at some stage a very light rifle might be developed with .22lr and .22wmr and of course .17wmr, plus 410 shotgun options.

For special forces it means learning to handle one weapon... only needing to buy one set of accessories like front grips and lights and sights etc and having one easy to use rifle for a range of roles without needing several different weapons.

Assuming the AK-12 just has Yugo type raised mag followers, you would have your BHO there. To have a true BHO and bolt catch in the AK-12, it would be kinda complicated. I really think it would be a big problem to have two types of AK-12's on the civilian market, one convertable, and one not convertable. They should try to push for the convertable one.

When it comes to selling to civilian customers it makes no sense to standardise into a one size fits all... different customers will want different things... for instance here in NZ we will want a standard rifle stock design with no free standing pistol grip. For our market not having such an option will greatly limit the number of people prepared to buy it. For other markets it might not be an issue, but having the different types means better options for the customer which is a good thing.

Considering the location of the button for the BHO device I rather suspect they probably went for a design that uses standard mags with a pin or wedge that projects forward from behind into the rear of the magazine. If a fresh round is present the wedge or pin is blocked which allows the bolt carrier to come forward and load a fresh round from the mag. If there is no ammo in the mag then the pin or wedge can move forward and the bolt carrier is blocked which holds it open when the last shot is fired or the mechanism is racked back on an empty magazine. Not rocket science or complicated... like I said the SKS already had that feature in 1945.

I rather suspect that for the most part the fixed, non-modular AK12s will sell rather well as they will be simpler and cheaper than the multi calibre models. This means for units of the Russian military who only ever use 5.45mm calibre ammo it makes no sense to go for a multi calibre modular weapon. For the average grunt the AK12 is easier to use and better than a standard AK. For special forces however the extra cost of a modular weapon is justified and will save them money by reducing the actual number of weapons they need to buy and own.

For a civilian it comes down to choice... for some they will buy one calibre and not bother with the other calibre options. For others they will take advantage of the more expensive multi calibre model and save money by buying several calibre kits instead of several different calibre rifles.

You need to ask yourself what parts are different and why they would need to be different.

The receiver is the same, the mag position and mag release are the same, the positioning for the recoil spring, the bolt carrier and bolt are all the same, the trigger and safety mechanisms are the same.