A lot of people these days are complaining, that the firearms industry in recent years is very boring and there is no real innovation anywhere. Companies are mostly tinkering with proven 60-year-old designs, inventing new, often useless, accessories, and trying to sell [Read More…]
The Kalashnikov Museum keeps releasing new videos showing some of the rarest experimental Soviet firearms. These videos provide a good visual reference of the basic mechanical features of these unusual rifles. They also allow writing an article based on them making it [Read More…]
There’s very little that has truly been new in the way of firearms mechanisms in the past century. Materials and ammunition design have improved steadily, but the great bulk of firearms mechanisms in use today were designed in the early part of the 20th Century or [Read More…]
Polish gun magazine Broń i Amunicja posted two photos of the elusive AN-94 rifle in use with Russian forces recently. The 5.45mm hyperburst rifles are seen equipped with optics mounted via rails to the Soviet-era dovetail scope mount integral to the receiver of the [Read More…]
The dark horse of the Russian next-generation individual weapon trials has been the A545, better known as the AEK-971. Where the AK-12 is essentially the well-known and respected Kalashnikov with some new architecture that supports the modern accessory-driven paradigm, [Read More…]
Retiv sends us this follow up image of an AN-94 mockup/demilled gun in 7.62×39, at an expo. He writes: Mr. Nathaniel, here is additional photo for you from Russian forum where i got first photo of that thing. Did they just attach 7.62×39 mag to it? It does [Read More…]
Reader Retiv sent in a photo he found of a Russian soldier posing with his miscellaneous weapons and equipment. Judging by what is present, the soldier is most likely Russian special forces, or spetsnaz. Of the most note is the extremely rare and virtually never [Read More…]
The AN-94 was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s to replace the AK-74M. Like all contenders for Russia’s next-generation assault rifle it has faded into obscurity. It features a novel delayed recoil mechanism called “blowback shifted pulse.”. [Read More…]
The late-Soviet-era AN-94 is a rifle that, in the West, is shrouded in hype, speculation, but, above all, mystery. The rifle’s capabilities, how it works, how it’s made, and who exactly uses it (and for what) are all matters the West has only been able to [Read More…]
The Izhevsk Shooting Club has produced a high quality seven part video series on the disassembly and reassembly of the AN-94 rifle. Unfortunately it is all in Russian, but most TFB readers will be able to follow what is being explained the first four parts of the [Read More…]
Shooting Illustrated has published a detailed account of the fascinating AN-94 “Abakan” rifle. In 1993, a mysterious rifle appeared at an arms display at the elite Taman Guards Division outside Moscow. The strange new rifle was labeled “ASN”—a Russian [Read More…]
Kit Up reports that the US Army would like hyper-burst capability (firing multiple rounds at incredibly high rate of fire) for the next generation carbine. It is not an official requirement yet for the potential M4 replacement, but could be in the future. Matt Cox [Read More…]
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