#RussianFederation

The Russian Federal Protective Service ( FSO, a rough equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service),  Federal Security Service (FSB, a rough equivalent of the U.S. FBI) and the National Guard have adopted a rifle from the Russian company TsNIITochMash, which produces a bolt action precision rifle by the name of Tochnost/Точность, or Precision/accuracy. All three of these organizations operate mainly within Russia itself and are primarily and historically associated with security of the interior of the country. Unlike the U.S. National Guard, the National Guard of the Russian Federation is extremely new in its organization, only having been founded last year in April of 2016. Suffice to say, an adoption by all three of these organizations is a very substantial  adoption given the size of all three organizations, despite the adoption being a precision rifle system.

Kalashnikov Concern’s newest weapon releases have received quite a lot of attention since they were first shown off at the ARMY 2016 military and technology forum in Moscow, and as the conference winds down, I want to take a more thorough pass through four of these new products from the company. Since we published announcements for three of these new weapons, Maxim Popenker, gun expert and TFB contributor, has published more detailed descriptions of the RPK-16, MA, and SVK rifles on his website, Modern Firearms. Let’s take a look at what he has to teach us about these new weapons:

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.

The Russian Army will be upgrading its automatic infantry support weapons soon. The legacy 7.65x54mmR PKM belt-fed general purpose machine gun will be supplanted in the dismounted role by the PKP “Pecheneg” automatic rifle designed at the end of the 20th Century, reports ArmyRecognition.com:

There has been a lot of news about the Russian AK-12 rifle to come out this past Winter, and we at TFB have stayed on top of our coverage of the design’s evolution. However, since late January, there are a few things we have learned, so now it’s about time for an update. One of the most informative videos regarding the rifle itself that I have yet seen is this one from December of 2014, which besides showing the monolithic upper rail fifth prototype in action, also comes equipped with both automatic and human translations. I encourage readers to watch it with both comments and subtitles turned “ON”: