AKs from Finland. Part 1: Development History
The small European country of Finland always had a great reputation when it comes to arms production. For collectors, Finnish-made Mosin-Nagants are some of the most desirable Mosin rifles, but there is another rifle design that the Finnish took to a whole other level. It is called RK 62, the Finnish AK.
AK History @ TFB:
Developed 62 years ago, it remains the main service weapon of the Finnish military. Despite recent acceptance into NATO, there are no official plans to replace those workhorses any time soon.
The creation of Finnish AK
After WW2, Finland had to replace its fleet of Mosin rifles with something more modern. However, Finns wouldn’t be Finns, if they didn’t come up with a meticulous testing program.
First, they had to decide which round they would use. There were three options: NATO 7.62×51, Soviet 7.62×39, and developing their own ammunition.
In this case, the Finnish Defense Forces managed to make better decisions compared to bigger and richer countries and decided that creating their own round would not make sense. NATO 7.62×51 was considered to be too large and heavy, and it left Finland with 7.62×39.
Naturally, the designer had to obtain an AK and test it to develop a new weapon of this caliber. It wasn’t an easy task – in 1956, the first AKs were revealed to the public, and the technology data package was transferred to a few socialist states (if you want to know more, check out my article about Hungarian AKs).
In 1956, the Finnish military was looking for a way to buy AKs without much optimism. However, they quickly found a shady Polish dealer who was willing to sell one sample. Erkki Maristo, inspector of the Finnish Defense Forces Weapons Department traveled to Poland to obtain that sample.
The rifle was disassembled into parts and shipped by sea through the Polish port of Gdansk to the Finnish port of Kotka. Later on, the Finnish military ordered a batch of Polish-made AKs for additional testing and evaluation through official channels.
The guns were ordered on March 15, 1957, and arrived in the summer of the same year. Polish AKs received an official designation – m/57. In July of 1957, Finnish engineers began testing.
After the evaluation process concluded, the Finnish engineer Lauri Oksanen, who would later become the main designer of RK 62 concluded that AK was the best automatic weapon out of all the samples he studied. However, he decided he could improve the design and began working on the first Finnish AK.
Valmet factory started design work and agreed that the intellectual property would belong to the Finnish defense forces. In November 1957 the defense ministry approved the purchase of ammo for testing and presented a list of requirements for the new weapon.
In the summer of 1958, the first prototype was ready and received an official designation of m/58. It used wood for the stock and the handguard, unlike later Finnish AKs.
One example of m/58 is showcased in the collection of the Finnish military museum in the island fortress called Suomenlinna near the capital of the country, Helsinki.
The trials for the new Finnish rifle
Apart from the Finnish design, several unique guns participated in the trials. The first was AR-10. Armalite actually developed a special version of the rifle chambered in 7.62×39, but it was late for trials. Another interesting contender was SIG 510-3, a rolled-delayed Swiss rifle, also chambered for 7.62×39.
But since both weapons arrived late, Lauri Oksanen had more time to perfect his prototype before the trials began. Even at this stage, he tried to minimize the use of wood, trying to make the rifle cheaper in future mass production.
Trials started on June 23, 1958, and lasted until July 5, when three weapons participated: M58, Polish AK, and Swiss SIG 510-3. Tests included water, mud, and freezing the rifle. Captain Mauri Makela was in charge of the trials.
M58 had the best overall results but experienced some problems with a trigger mechanism, which malfunctioned and occasionally fired two-shot bursts in semi-auto mode.
But most importantly, these tests convinced defense forces that the new weapon of the Finnish army could indeed be manufactured domestically and there was no need to buy a weapon from abroad.
In Part 2 of this article, I will talk about the beginning of mass production of RK 62 and how its design withstood the test of time.
The author would like to thank the Finnish company Valman Ltd for contributing to the research and photos used in this article. VALMAN is a company that designs and manufactures upgrades for the AK platform, including items designed specifically for RK 62.
Vladimir Onokoy is a small arms subject matter expert and firearms instructor. Over the years he worked in 20 different countries as a security contractor, armorer, firearms industry sales representative, product manager, and consultant. His articles were published in the Recoil magazine, Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defence Journal, and Silah Report. He also contributed chapters to books from the "Vickers Guide: Kalashnikov" series. Email: machaksilver at gmail dot com. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Vladimir-Onokoy-articles-and-videos-about-guns-and-other-unpopular-stuff-107273143980300/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vladonokoy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/machaksilver
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"...there are no official plans to replace those workhorses any time soon."
Only there are. Your own website covered it when it was announced that Sweden and Finland would develop a new joint service rifle:
https://www.thefirearmblog....
Your site also covered it when it was announced that a rifle family had been selected for testing:
https://www.thefirearmblog....
I don't expect authors to know the entire catalogue of articles on a website but this took 3 minutes of googling and TFB is right up there in the top five search results for "RK 62 Replacement"
Well written, without any significant errors!
It might be worth to mention that according to Finnish military historian Markku Palokangas, FDF intelligence command had assessed that Soviet military intelligence (GRU) was in knowing of the 1956 smuggling operation, and that it was an intentional effort by GRU to get Finland to review the AK-47 past the official, let alone political level. Finland actually asked the Soviet Union to sell them to Finland as a stopgap measure and for wider testing already in 1957, but at the time they didn't yet want to do so, but Finland got several hundred of them through Poland as written here. However, in 1958 after it turned out that the Kalashnikov-pattern rifle were the winner of the trials, the Soviet Union already offered them to Finland, and Finland bought 20 000 of them, so to begin training with them before enough domestic rifles could be manufactured by Valmet.
The AR-10 in 7.62x39 indeed arrived late for the testing programme, and initial testing (before the final phase where AK-47, Valmet/Oksanen m/58 and SG 510-3 competed) was carried out with a 7.62x51 version. It suffered from a misfeeding magazine, which was its worst problem and prevented some of the technical testing like the freezing test. The 7.62x39 version was reviewed late as a goodwill measure to give feedback for the development for Armalite, and it actually had some features from earlier Finnish feedback, not seen in other AR-10 before or after (or AR-15, for the matter), like an unique style of the charging handle inside the charging handle, which had a side-folding extension for operation with winter mittens, somewhat like HK rifles.