Tag Archives: Kalashnikov

Yankee Kalash Updates

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While at CANCON 2023 in Savannah, Georgia a few weeks ago, I stopped by the Kalashnikov USA booth and ran into John Cason, KUSA’s director of sales. He told me that the company wouldn’t be in Vegas for the SHOT Show later this month, but he did have several sweet new models they had queued up for 2024.

Among them is the long-promised American-made 7.62x39mm AK101 sporter (KR101), a 5.56 NATO AK102 sporter (KR102), side folding wood-stocked (not a misprint) KR103s, and a tiny Vityaz.

KUSA’s “Micro 9” Vityaz, made for an Indonesian military contract but soon to come to the U.S. consumer market

Developed for an overseas military contract, KUSA had what is tentatively just called the “Micro 9” at the show. Now don’t confuse that term with a micro compact 9mm pistol such as a P365 or Hellcat. This is a 5-inch barreled semi-auto KP-9 Vityaz clone rather than the standard 9.25-incher that the company intends to market as both a pistol (that can either use a triangle brace or be Form 1’d later should the user want) and as a factory SBR.

PSA Krinkov (no, really, they say)

Palmetto State Armory has been teasing the public for years that they have an American-made Krink headed to market while not delivering.

Well, Cameron surfaced over the weekend on social media and said the company is in their final testing phase for the gun, expecting to launch it in February (yes, of 2024).

They intend to have five variants at launch– all in 5.56 with included side rails.

These will include a plum gloss, a Vudu version, a JMac railed option, a redwood version, and an SBR-ready variant. PSA says that they will work on 5.45, .300 BLK, and 7.62×39 variants after the 5.56s have been released. No pricing is available.

Color me excited.

More Russki unmanned vehicle action…

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Russia’s Kalashnikov Concern this week released a bunch of info on their new gear, including some amped-up video of robotic vehicles getting their smash on.

In the above, they show off their Soratnik (Companion) and Nahlebnik (Parasite) combat unmanned ground vehicles. The first carries a 30mm grenade launcher/machine gun set-up while the latter totes a four-pack of anti-tank rockets. The vehicles are supposed to be capable of speeds of about 25 mph and semi-autonomous operation with weapon functions under the control of a remote operator.

Also seen is a PPDU remote-controlled weapon station which mounts a heavy machine gun that cuts through cinderblock like butter. And be sure to notice the very nice Vitiaz SMGs the guys on foot are toting, among other hardware. All that’s missing is the reveal that the driver is Tsar Vladimir standing shirtless in the snow with a Super Bowl ring.

More images and info in my Guns.com column after the jump.

I bet Hugo Schmeisser is rolling and spinning

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There, under the Krinkov, is a German StG44 in exploded view, which would probably be OK on any monument except that of Mikhail Kalashnikov

As I covered over at Guns.com, the Russians spent 35 million rubles (about $580K US) on a sprawling monument to the late firearms engineer Mikhail Kalashnikov that was unveiled in Moscow last week. Besides a nearly 30-foot high statue of Kalashnikov, the base of a monument to St. Mikhail, the Orthodox patron of gunsmiths and warriors, contains a representation of several of the engineer’s designs including an AK42 sub gun, AK47, AKM and AK74 rifles, as well as RPK and PK machine guns.

However, as noted by some sharp-eyed firearms enthusiasts and reported by Russian-based Kalashnikov magazine, just under a Krinkov AKS-74U is what appears to be the parts diagram for a German StG-44 Sturmgewehr.

Which some (notably outside of the Motherland) have contended that the AK was based on for decades.

This has caused understandable heartburn in Russia, and, as Russian firearms wonks pile on to disagree with the lineage of the AK– noting it is as Russian as a Florida pirated movie salesman, the offending diagram has been torched out.

Roll that beautiful RPK-16 footage

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Designed to be the Russian military’s new light machine gun, the 5.45x39mm RPK (Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova)-16 sprouted from the Rostec state-owned Kalashnikov Group last year and is expected to be placed in service with the Rosgvardiya (think National Guard), internal affairs troops and Army to replace older RPKs.

It draws from the AK-12 program and comes in a few different barrel lengths while including a folding stock that, when swung shut, drops the overall length to just 25-inches. Weight without the detachable bipod and mag is 8.8-pounds.

End of the line for VEPR?

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A classic Molot VEPR in .308 with the long 22-inch barrel and Counter Sniper Mil-Dot 4-16x44mm optic with illuminated reticle. Now more expensive than ever!

Back in January, I spoke at length with people over at Molot who were working hard on extending their exports of VEPR rifles and shotguns to the U.S. They were hopeful that the new Trump administration would be friendly to lifting some sanctions on Russian-based companies. Russian-made firearms were popular export items to the states until the conflict in the Ukraine and the resulting international backlash triggered a host of official embargos.

Per figures from the International Trade Commission, 204,788 firearms of all kinds were imported from Russia in 2013.

This figure plunged to just 9,556 in 2015 — mainly from Molot, the only large firearms maker not named in sanctions.

Well, it looks like that figure is going to be a lot lower in 2018…

Kalashnikov CEO wants a 20-ton ‘reconnaissance-strike robot’

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Kalashnikov’s BAS-01G Soratnik unmanned vehicle can carry a machine gun and quartet of antitank missiles, but the company’s CEO wants to supersize it. (Photo: Kalashnikov Concern)

Kalashnikov Concern CEO Alexei Krivoruchko told Russian media that the company is developing a pretty big unmanned combat vehicle.

In an interview with state-run media outlet Tass, Krivoruchko hyped the partially-state run factories progress on advanced weapons including the new RPK-16 light machine gun before moving on to the mechanical elephant in the room– unmanned ground combat vehicles. The CEO advised a new 20-ton platform (described as a “робота” — robot) is under development which, when compared to what Kalash already markets, is huge.

The company showed off their current 7-ton BAS-01G Soratnik (Comrade-in-arms) unmanned vehicle in 2016, then last December made it do tricks for the Russian Ministry of Defence while armed with four anti-tank rockets and a machine gun. Alternatively, it can be modified to carry up to a 30mm gun or eight Kornet-EM laser-guided anti-tank missiles. Soratnik can be positioned as a bastion and act autonomously for 10 days as such in a standby mode, waiting to engage a threat.

I covered it over at Guns.com and am honored that Popular Mechanics picked it up as well.

Will Russian AKs and Korean war surplus M1s come ashore post-Trump?

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Some are hopeful the new management in Washington will be able to lift barriers to overseas firearm imports erected over the years, though the going could be slow.

President Donald Trump on Friday said it was “very early” to tell if the United States should lift sanctions on Russia, but that he seeks a “great relationship” with Putin and Russia.

On the campaign trail, Trump’s platform on trade concentrated on American jobs while floating the possibility of a tariff on all imported goods to help ease the current trade deficit. However, the Republican’s position on gun rights promised to curtail federal gun bans and limits. The two concepts, when balanced against one another, leaves open the possibility of action on foreign-made guns currently off-limits to buyers in the U.S.

I talked to industry insiders on both sides of the pond, the ATF, and the International Trade Commission to get the scoop on if bans going back to the 1960s could be reshaped.

More in my column at Guns.com

Inside Izhevsk

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Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov got a chance recently to visit the Kalashnikov Concern in the Ural Mountain town of Izhevsk to take a tour of the Motherland’s great arms works. Founded originally in 1807 by Tsar Alexander I to build muskets for his immense army gearing up to fight Napoleon, the plant has remained in production for over two centuries, with minor upgrades.

Besides the traditional AK-series rifles (in their most modern AK-103 and AK-12 variants shown below, hold your horses), the plant also makes Saiga-branded rifles and shotguns for export and Molot “animal farm” rifles for civilian sales in Russia.

Oh yeah, you know what I like....

Oh yeah, you know what I like….

I wonder how many of these are California legal

I wonder how many of these are California legal

The AK-12. Test firing these must be a hard job, but Ivan has to do it.

The AK-12. Test firing these must be a hard job, but Ivan has to do it.

We hear nothing feels better than a Vityaz-SN sub machine gun right off the line

We hear nothing feels better than a Vityaz-SN sub machine gun right off the line

Can we please get these in the U.S., complete with EoTechs. And yes, that is a Saiga 12 sp.340– dig that muzzy brakejob, but Ivan has to do it. We hear nothing feels better than a Vityaz-SN sub machine gun right off the line Can we please get these in the U.S., complete with EoTechs. And yes, that is a Saiga 12 sp.340– dig that muzzy brake

Can we please get these in the U.S., complete with EoTechs. And yes, that is a Saiga 12 sp.340– dig that muzzy brakejob, but Ivan has to do it.

More at Guns.com

Gonna be hard to get those AKs moving forward kiddies!

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Treasury, working with the State Department, following up on the POTUS’s Executive Orders from earlier this year, added several new people and companies to the list of sanctioned groups because of the whole Ukraine v Russia thing.

This includes defense product companies Mashinostroyenia to the list  and Almaz

However, this list now also includes:

“KALASHNIKOV CONCERN (a.k.a. CONCERN KALASHNIKOV; a.k.a. IZHEVSKIY MASHINOSTROITEL’NYI ZAVOD OAO; f.k.a. IZHMASH R&D CENTER; f.k.a. JSC NPO IZHMASH; f.k.a. NPO IZHMASH OAO; a.k.a. OJSC CONCERN KALASHNIKOV; f.k.a. OJSC IZHMASH; f.k.a. SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION IZHMASH JOINT STOCK COMPANY), 3, Derjabin Pr., Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic 426006, Russia; Registration ID 1111832003018 [UKRAINE2].”

Thats right, the old AK-maker formerly known as Izmash is now officially off-limits as an approved US-export destination.

What this means specifaclly is in the below FAQ from Treasury:

If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions?  Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market?

If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction.  New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014.  If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]

375. If I have Kalashnikov products in my inventory, can I sell them?

If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]

….Oh well, was fun while it lasted.

 

Tsar Putin checking out the new line of AK12s at Izmash, we mean Kalishnikov