AK-12 Rifle Discussion

or would that money be better spent on other military equipment like the new uniforms and vests they are going to adopt next year.

I don't think they have the problem of a shortage of money for things at the moment.

In fact compared with the cost of flak jackets and radios and other equipment that buying new rifles will be one of the cheapest things they will be buying over the next few years.

The main question, that we can't answer, is what is the express purpose of the AK12 for the Russian Army.

Is it accurate enough, is it easier to use, does it eliminate all of the problems they have outlined about the original rifle and can it be bought for a price that is acceptable for both parties.

Of course the other question is, what is the from scratch new designs that are also presumably being developed and do they make purchasing AK12s a waste of time because they are superior in every way?

Sounds to me like they have gone to real shooters in the special forces for hints and tips to create the AK12 and that the result... once the kinks and problems are worked out should result in an excellent rifle family... the question is, will the next gen rifle be even better.

I rather suspect that civilian sales of the AK12 and related weapons will be very good because it will probably do what it says... ie all the good features of an AK with the bad things sorted out too.

Quite right SWAT pointman... politics does have a lot to do with this, as does economies of scale... introducing a new calibre is very very expensive, the West Germans had pretty much decided to introduce the G11 when the two Germanys were reunified, which destroyed the G11 programme. The cost of new ammo and a new rifle couldn't be justified at a time when the cold war had ended and the cost of absorbing east germany into west germany had to be dealt with.

In many ways the G11 was revolutionary but money was the decider.

Now in Russia there is money and I hope Russia starts spending money on their small arms makers... give them new modern tools, new metals and other materials, and most of all new propellents and bullets to improve performance and consistency.

In many ways the AK-74 beat out its competition because it was a known product that could easily be produced in existing factories. The focus wasn't accuracy. In real combat many soldiers never even fire their weapons, and of those that do most don't even bother to aim.

During WWII only about 2 percent of soldiers actually went out of their way to kill the enemy... in war they are called heroes... in peace time they are called Psychopaths.

With modern training people can be conditioned to not consider what they are doing when engaging the enemy... the proof is in the Falklands war... the British were very effective at killing Argentinians because they had been properly trained to do it. They were no better prepared to deal with what they had been trained to do afterwards or to deal with what they had seen as the Argentinians... that sort of training doesn't interest western militaries.

They might say that there was no weapon that was better than the M16,

I should add that just being better was not enough... it had to be significantly better to warrant the cost of introducing a new rifle into service... several rifles were better in some ways, but none were significantly better so they kept the standard rifle and gave it a few improvements.

I guess it was Brito-centric research. Logistic tail idealy don't engage in battle and some personnel don't have proper shooting training at all.

I am very much simplifying it, but shooting at medium ranges at blurs that were rushing forward from cover is not the same as shooting at a target within 100m when you can see their faces and know they are people just like you... believe it or not the natural instinct of most people with WWII training was to empathise with those they were fighting and many would deliberately fire too high or too low... there was no one checking your shots.

On different front however different things happened and a properly motivated force would shoot to kill out of fear or out of genuine hatred etc.

This research was also found to be relevant in Vietnam where over 25,000 shots were fired on average per kill... not just because the enemy was an elusive target. Mines, disease, air power and artillery tended to be the main killers... though if you put them in order disease was a very effective killer.

Both sides were determined to kill and had guts for it.

Which was sadly reflected in the high body count for both sides in that conflict.

Further developments on the AK were mainly focused on increasing accuracy, in particular on fully automatic/bursts.

True, though the main benefit of changing from 7.62 to 5.45 was a significant reduction in ammo weight with the introduction of a low recoil flat shooting bullet.

Even with the highly effective muzzle brake and less recoiling caliber, it didn't seem to be enough for the Russian

I think the AK-74 is accurate enough already... sure you might not be able to hit a human target at 600m but you wont be shooting at human targets at that range anyway. Out to 300-400m it is accurate enough... any further away and you need a more lethal bullet design.

Going too small a bullet calibre risks reduced lethality and problems with stability with long narrow projectiles.

Telescoped case ammo is really only new and useful tech for tank gun rounds and IFV rounds in the sense that they are compact and take up less room in a turret and can be handled much more easily in an autoloader as they are basically like a coke can with a semi rim at one end... if you use a rotary mechanism to load you can make the loading mechanism very compact and like a set of revolving chambers with say 3 oclock behind the gun breach then at 9 oclock the empty shell case could be blown forward out of the cylinder and ejected, with a fresh round loaded at the other positions between 3 and 9.

Caseless ammo reduces weight and cost but is more expensive and would probably be more prone to damage so factory preloaded magazines will likely be standard with the ammo too fragile to be handloaded. Large capacity mag packs will be useful however.

I suspect that plastic cased ammo might be an intermediate step, with the next step either being EM or perhaps a binary liquid propellent.

In the future will we see grunts use 50cal assault rifles that use telescopic ammo?

The main feature of telescopic ammo is its compact shape, which is not really very relevant to small arms.

Very simply, if you look at the 12.7mm round, it is a metal tube with a bottle neck and a projectile that sticks out the front.

ie:



The projectile sticking out the front makes the entire round quite long but more importantly it makes it an odd shape as it is narrow at the front and wider at the rear so there is a lot of wasted empty space around the front of the round that is just empty space.

Very simply a telescoped version of this round would take the original dimensions of 12.7 x 108mm and move the projectile to inside the tube case that is slightly lengthened... so say a 125mm long case that is a pure cylinder with the projectile inside.

For the armour piercing round that internal projectile will be a long narrow dart shape with a sabot to fill the barrel tube, so the standard AP round will be APFSDS. The standard ball round will be similar to the standard ball projectile, but when you stack these rounds that are pure cylinders there wont be any wasted empty space at the projectile end. Using more modern and more powerful propellants the round might even be actually shorter than the original case length of 108mm, which makes the new round much more compact as the original rounds case was 108mm plus the length of the projectile.

Another advantage of telescopic rounds is that if we take the example above of a telescopic version of the 12.7 x 108mm... if the shell case was 17mm across at the base then a weapon designed to fire the original rounds in 12.7mm calibre would just need a slightly larger calibre barrel to fire new 16mm calibre projectiles using the same gun, the same ammo feed, the same bolt the same everything... except of course the slightly larger calibre barrel.

The difference in not huge in 12.7mm calibre, but imagine a large round like the 57mm round used in the S-60 gun...



Without measuring precisely using the 410mm long case of the round next to it the 347mm case of the 57mm round... the gap between the top of the case to the top of the case of the 410mm is about 60mm and with your fingers and that gap you can measure about two of those lengths as the rough projectile length of the 57mm round beyond the shell case.

This means that the 57mm shell has a 347mm long shell case and the projectile sticks a further 120mm beyond that so you will be needing at least a 460mm length space to store a round. Note also that the shell case is much wider than the actual calibre of the round.

Converting this round to a telescopic round you could probably make the shell case slightly narrower, yet extend the case to about 380-400mm with the projectile contained inside the case. This make the round smaller and more efficient in size, yet with modern powders and explosives and AP penetrators you will have a much more powerful and more effective round.

With the change of barrel calibre you could later upgrade the round to a 65mm or even 70mm calibre for a larger HE round.

Another important factor is that the larger the calibre the more energy you can push down it without the problems of bore erosion.

This means whatever performance you can get from an APFSDS round in 57mm calibre, you can get even better performance from a 70mm calibre version... with a change in ammo and barrel.

Obviously it would be critical that you make it so that you cant load a 70mm round into a 57mm gun... perhaps a small cutout at the front that wont allow 70mm rounds to be properly chambered in 57mm guns would be the best solution.

BTW how is the Ash-12,7 light enough to be handheld?Does it use ultralight materials?

The ASh-12 does not use standard 12.7 x 108mm rounds. It uses a special 12.7 x 55mm round in both subsonic and supersonic varieties.

It is a manual loading weapon... a straight pull bolt action, so it does not have a gas system... which probably saves weight.

It is important to remember the 6 x 49mm round was intended as a replacement for the 7.62 x 54Rmm round that entered service over 120 years ago. (1891)

It is not an attempt at a replacement for the 30 cal rifle calibre and the 22 calibre assault rifle round like those proposed in the west.

The few known 6 x 49mm prototypes seem to have rather long barrels which suggests to me that velocity is critical. Perhaps new bullpup weapons that maximise barrel length might suit this round better than conventional layouts.

Yes.

Think of it as a standard automatic rifle like an AK, but with the gas mechanism and piston removed completely.

When you pull the trigger the hammer hits the firing pin which sets off the primer and ignites the powder charge. The powder charge turns from a solid to a gas and expands in all directions at once, but the chamber and the bolt face stop that expansion and the only way left is down the barrel pushing the bullet out of the way of course. It blows the projectile down the barrel and towards the target. Normally in a gas powered automatic, some gas is tapped off and hits a piston which pushes back the bolt carrier and unlocks the bolt which then moves back, ejects the empty case and reloads the weapon... all in the blink of an eye.

The ASh-12 doesn't have the gas system nor the piston, so when you pull the trigger the round is fired but the operator then has to pull the cocking handle to remove the empty case from the chamber (on their back stroke) and load a fresh round ready to fire (on their forward stroke).

Sounds odd, but clearly this rifle is not intended for a high rate of fire and the weight and complication saved by removing the gas system has been deemed worth it.

OOPS... Sorry... my mistake.

The ASh-12 has a gas system and can fire semi and full automatic.

I was mistaking it with the VKS and VSSK sniper rifles that are straight pull bolt actions and also the MTs-558 (below) civilian rifle which is also a straight pull bolt action weapon.

The range of ammo includes accurate subsonic rounds for use with the sniper models, but also armour penetrating subsonic rounds, and it includes lighter supersonic projectiles.

For the VSK and VSSK the subsonic rounds would be preferred to keep quiet, but with the ASh-12 the supersonic rounds would probably be much more effective.

AFAIK that civilian rifle also comes in 338 LM models as well as the 12.7 x 55mm round. In either calibre it would be ideal as a road block weapon, or for urban conflict shooting through walls at targets, or hitting enemy troops behind light cover or in light vehicles. I suspect the standard ammo for the ASh-12 would be supersonic 12.7 x 55mm rounds, though with subsonic ammo and of course a large suppressor it could be used as an upgrade of the AS and VSS suppressed scout weapons with longer range and better flak vest defeat performance.

I reckon it would be a good pig gun too.

BTW if you are a gun nut then can I suggest this site to you:

http://gunco-book.tripod.com/Index.htm

It has pages of this sort of thing:

I particularly like the inclusion of prototype weapons including MGs and sniper rifles in 6 x 49mm calibre.

I would suspect that the rifle will be a further development with things changed from the one we saw before after experience of the first round of tests.

BTW looking at the original Russian the bullpup seems to be designated VS-121 and is based on the SV-98, which is interesting... there are not a huge number of bullpup bolt action rifles around.

So it says it will show all this stuff on its 80th birthday and that it was formed on the 28th of April 1933... so that should be in a couple of days time (tomorrow here in NZ, but a day later in Russia).

Should be interesting.

BTW thanks for the heads up.

Interesting they are making a bullpup version of the SV-98, they clearly want a more compact weapon without sacrificing barrel length and therefore range and power and accuracy.

Some other articles of interest from that page:

Izhmash has received a license for the development and production of ammunition

NGO "Izhmash" was licensed by the Federal Service for Defense Contracts for the development, production and sale of ammunition. For the 205-year history of Russia's largest arms companies such license has appeared at "Izhmash" for the first time.

In accordance with the license company will be able to develop and produce ammunition caliber of 30 mm. This will allow the NGO "Izhmash" more effectively conduct development work on the development of advanced models of weapons for civilian and military purposes.

"Now," Izhmash "will not only lead the development of products to existing types of ammunition, but will design the entire rifle range" weapon-munition "- said the chief designer of the company Vladimir Zlobin.

Primarily designed and produced to be precision-guided munitions for the sports and sniper rifles. Currently, "Izhmash" already being developed three shooting complexes, including an AK-12.

Izhmash creates promising Shooting Complex

"Izhmash", part of the State Corporation Rostekhnadzor, will provide law enforcement agencies radically new weapons systems. Experts Design enterprise technology center has already begun to develop a pistol, rifle-grenade (FSM), rifle (sniper) and machine-gun complexes.

"Izhmash" intends to provide law enforcement agencies radically new weapons systems, in full accordance with the program of modernization of the Russian army until 2020.

According to the chief designer of NPO "Izhmash" Vladimir Zlobin it comes to small arms modular. This solution simplifies the production and post-upgrade products. Zlobin also noted that there may be changes in the layout - are going to use a bullpup scheme in which the hammer mechanism and the gun shop located in the butt behind the trigger.

In addition to shooting complexes will be created with the new ammunition ballistic solution. New cartridges will have uprated accuracy of fire, the effective range of target destruction, as well as higher-punching ability.

Leaders of "Izhmash" expects that design work will be included in the program of modernization of the Russian army until 2020 and receive appropriate funding from the state defense order.