In 2017, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation held their annual international military-technical forum known as ARMY-2017 outside of Moscow. There were over 1,000 exhibitors and over 500,000 visitors. It was an ideal spot for the Kalashnikov Concern to show off their short AK-12K, AK-15K and RPK-16K weapons.
In the video, Vladimir Onokay, a technical consultant with the Kalashnikov Concern, does a great job showing the three weapons and giving an overview of each’s design points.
AK-12K in 5.45×39
Some things he pointed out were:
- Free floating handguard
- It has Picatinny Rails for mounting accessores
- Front sight on the gas block and with the rear sight at the end of rail, the sight radius is longer than traditional AKs
- The muzzle device is more for controlling flash during night operations
- He showed the windowed magazine for quick round counts
- The rear stock is adjustable
AK-15K in 7.62×39
The AK-15 is simply the AK-12 but chambered in 7.62×39. He does make the interesting comment that they found a sweet spot in weapons weight of 3.2-3.3 kilograms for controllable fire in 7.62×39. They try to make the weapons as similar as possible and this is really a family of weapons that can be made in different calibers.
The RPK-16K in 5.45×39
This light machine gun sports a 95 round drum and has swappable barrels. A short one for close quarters battle (CQB) that requires a shorter weapon and a longer barrel for other use.
The Video
It’s an 8:00 video and has some great footage.
I hope you enjoyed this!
Please note that all images were extracted from the video and are the property of their respective owner.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.