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.
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