#5.45x39

Within the last couple of months, Rifle Dynamics has been releasing short Q&A videos where Jim Fuller, the founder of RD, was answering to customers’ questions and showing some AK manipulation drills. I’ll post these videos in chronological order.

On display at the recent Russian Army 2017 expo was Kalashnikov’s new AM-17 and AMB-17 compact assault rifles. The AM-17 is a 5.45x39mm caliber improved version of the MA assault rifle introduced last year, designed to fill the same role as the AKS-74U compact assault rifle/personal defense weapon. The AMB-17 is an integrally suppressed variant of the same, firing the 9x39mm dedicated subsonic round first introduced with the AS Val and VSS Vintorez in the 1980s. Pictures of the new rifles have been posted on various social media outlets, such as TFB contributor and small arms expert Max Popenker’s blog.

The elusive Tokar-2 5.45mm belt-fed machine gun made an appearance at the recent Rosgvardia Open House event late last month. The event demonstrated weapons and equipment being used by the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia), and was open to the public. Russian media outlet Armytex posted pictures of the event to their page on the social media site VK.com, including photos of the Tokar-2:

The first practical shooting Rifle World Championship will take place in “Patriot” park in Russia from May 25 to June 11, 2017. It is going to be a pretty large event with 850 shooters from 45 countries participating. However, some shooters faced a problem of not being able to bring their guns into Russia, because of sanctions against this country. That pretty much excludes these shooters from the competition and risks to ruin the event.

I was planning to write about this firearm in the near future but it always was the last one in the list of such firearms (rare, experimental Soviet/Russian guns) to write an in-depth article about. And the reason is the extremely scarce information available about this firearm. This gun is literally something mysterious. However, recently Russian “ Kalashnikov Museum and Exhibition Complex of Small Arms” has released a short video on a Russian social media website, which shows this extremely interesting firearm and some of its parts. To my knowledge, this the first time internal parts of this firearm are being shown. Actually, it may be the first time this rifle appears on the internet at all.

When I started the Modern Intermediate Calibers series, I did not expect it to grow as large as it has. The initial plan was for 7 major calibers, which grew into well over 20, and the spinoff Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers, which itself will have at least 20 entries.

I have no doubt that the majority of our readers know about SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute), which sets the ammunition standards, cartridge and chamber drawings etc. These standards are guidelines for manufacturers, but many reloaders, builders, wildcatters and others also use them as a reference. Anyway, if you hear about SAAMI first time, you can see and download the SAAMI cartridge drawings and much more interesting information on their website by clicking here.

Back in September, TFB reader Brandon took us through the history and variations of Russian Kalashnikov magazine patterns in a two part article that’s well worth reading if you haven’t already. Having said that, if you don’t have the patience for articles or if you can’t get enough on AK magazine patterns, Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has released a brief video overview on the subject:

The Russian small arms firm Kalashnikov Concern has announced several new weapons during the International Military-Technical Forum “ARMY 2016” held by the Russian government in Moscow, the first of which is a new take on a promising 20th Century experimental design. The new Kalashnikov MA (Малогабаритный автомат, loosely translated to “Micro Assault Rifle”) is based on a 1970s-era design by Yevgeny Dragunov, which was also called “MA”. The original MA competed against designs from the Soviet Union’s best small arms engineers and showed substantial promise, but was passed over in favor of the AKS-74U, which shared much of its design with the already-in-service AK-74. Now, the MA is getting a makeover, and another shot – Kalashnikov Concern has adapted the basic design for 21st Century requirements and manufacturing techniques, resulting in a very modern-looking weapon.

The AK-12 is dead. Long live the AK-12! That’s the song Kalashnikov Concern is singing this week at the recent ARMY 2016 expo in Moscow, Russia. The radical AK-12 prototypes that have dominated Kalashnikov’s press over the past two years are gone, replaced by a more conservative rifle – also called “AK-12” – based on the Concern’s previous AK-400 prototypes. The new rifle addresses the Russian Army’s concerns regarding the AK-12’s cost and issues in fully automatic fire, an anonymous source told TFB, and is expected to be much cheaper to build than the previous model. It incorporates many of the same improvements developed for the previous AK-12 model, but improves the strength and resilience of some of the components.

In the late 1950s, after the first public demonstrations of the AR-15 and its new small caliber, high velocity cartridge, the Soviet Union took notice of the radical developments in military .22 caliber rounds in the United States. By 1959, four years before the adoption of the AR-15 as the M16 by the US Army, Soviet ballisticians were already testing Soviet-made replica 55gr spitzer FMJ bullets fired at over 3,000 ft/s from modified necked down 7.62x39mm cases. This program for a new small caliber high velocity lasted into the late 1960s, but it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the 5.45x39mm caliber was eventually issued alongside the AK-74 rifle, a modified but significantly more effective variant of the previous 7.62x39mm AKM assault rifle.

Rumors of a new Magpul magazine for the AK-74 platform are confirmed: The company has just released the PMAG 30 AK74 MOE magazine, designed to hold 30 rounds of 5.45x39mm ammunition and compatible with all 5.45mm caliber AK rifles that take traditional AK-74 pattern magazines.

As part of the recent Russian re-armament program including the T-14 Armata man battle tank, the T-50 air superiority fighter, and the AK-12 and A545 rifles, the Federation has initiated a program for a new 5.45mm caliber squad support weapon, called “Tokar-2”. The weapon being developed uses a combined belt and magazine feed system, similar to the system utilized by the Belgian-American M249 5.56mm automatic rifle.

This post was written as a companion to an upcoming Gun Guy Radio podcast, hosted by Ryan Michad. The discussion below will be expanded upon in the show when it’s released later this month, but for now, read on to learn more about the past, present, and future of infantry weapon calibers!

(This is Part 2 of the TFB Rifle Weight Omnibus. You can read Part 1 here.)