Probably the most interesting accessories that we saw during the Arms & Hunting 2018 exhibition were the AK upgrade parts introduce by a company called L.A.C. (L. A. Customs). This is a fairly new and small company yet it makes really cool products. In this article, we’ll take a brief look at two adjustable AK gas blocks made by this company.

Russia has responded to the suggestion that US manufacturers made copies of their small arms designs for use by Special Operations Command and the US’ allies. With US-Russian relations at a low, recent press attention surrounding the US’ desire for American-made Russian small arms has stoked tensions.

The wizards at Franklin Armory have done it again. Up for presale starting today is the company’s latest adventure: the AK-C1 for a Binary AK47. Purists will hate the fact that I’m calling all AK patterned/styled rifles “AK47s”, but I’m just going to let it fly (all hate mail can be forwarded to James Reeves’s Mailroom PO Box). These new triggers will allow for a safe-semi-binary selector function that will allow the operator to fire a round on both the pull of the trigger as well as the release of the trigger. Delivery of the preorders is set for Q1 of 2019.

Zack Smith is a competitive shooter and even shoots for Taran Tactical. Just last weekend Rifle Dynamics held their annual Red Oktober Rifle match. Zack shot the match and won first place with a $500 homebuilt AK.

If you recall, almost a year to the date, RS Regulate announced their milled Galil handguard. It upgrades your Galil with MLOK or Keymod slots. Well the evolution of that rail is now for AK rifles. The RS Regulate GKR AK Handguard was unveiled last weekend at the Red Oktober rifle match

Kalashnikov Media has published an article telling the story of a very interesting device designed to allow feeding linked ammunition into standard magazine-fed RPK-74 light machine guns. This device was called SPU (СПУ – Съемное Подающее Устройство, stands for Detachable Feeding Device) and it was developed in the late ’70s right after the adoption of 5.45x39mm cartridge and AK-74/RPK-74 weapon systems.

TangoDown has announced the addition of a new AK grip to their Battlegrip family of pistol grips. The new grip is called BG-AK. As the title of this article implies, this is exactly the same grip as the US PALM AK pistol grip. The latter became an accessory that is very hard to come by and its price skyrocketed after the US PALM closed its doors.

In this video, I give a quick rundown of some of the newer small arms presented by Kalashnikov group at ARMY-2018 expo: AK-200 series, AK-308, AM-17 and AMB-17.

On September 19, while reporting the Gunsmith’s Day events in Izhevsk, a Russian TV channel showed non-firing prototypes of a modular weapon system designed by the students of  Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University.

Rifle Dynamics has designed a new tunable AK gas block. Currently, it is available only as an upgrade option for the company’s production model rifles, however, according to the company officials, they may offer it as a separate part in the foreseeable future. Let’s first watch the Rifle Dynamics video where Jim Fuller introduces this product, then take a closer look at its key features.

Russia’s National Guard, the Rosgvardia, has placed orders with Kalashnikov Concern for several hundred of the company’s new AK-200 rifles and AK-205 carbines. The AK-200 and AK-205 are 5.45x39mm variants of the new improved AK-200 series of rifles.

At the beginning of the current year,  Century Arms announced that they started importing Romanian AK-based 9mm pistols called Draco NAK9. JMac Customs, being one of the leading AK accessories making companies, has already designed and prepares to launch three new products for NAK9 pistols. Today we have a chance to take a sneak peek at each of these accessories.

OK, this is not the KGB you thought about. In this case, KGB stands for Kraft Gun Builders and KGB LLC is an American company specialized in making AK accessories. Their latest product that has just been released is an AK pistol brace adapter called Stinger47. Let’s take a closer look.

In this episode of TFBTV, Jimmy walks you through the Lynx Polish AK-M/AK-47 Pistol. The Lynx AK47 Pistol is a semi auto 7.62×39 AKM Pistol built in Poland by WBP Rogow. These pistols are built with a blend of old school Kalashnikov build techniques and modern machinery. It all starts with a brand new FB Radom Steyr machine produced military cold hammer forged chrome lined barrel, mil spec forged barrel trunnion, and a fully machined bolt & carrier. The Lynx sports the traditional side rail for AK optic mounts as well. For the collectors this is an all Polish gun with matching numbers on the receiver, bolt, carrier, dust cover, safety selector, and trunnion. The 10 inch FB Radom hammer forged chrome lined barrel is designed for accuracy and maximum life. Each pistol has a underfolder trunnion installed for users looking to add an underfolder stock for SBR builds. The Lynx is finished off with a basic black paint style finish and comes with a 30 round WBP magazine poly Translucent magazine .

It was less than a year ago, at  SHOT Show 2018 when Wolf Ammunition officially introduced the legendary 9x39mm Soviet/Russian cartridge to the US market. Although it is a really interesting and capable round, there are not too many firearms made in this caliber yet because there are several obstacles such as getting the dimensions of the cartridge (as of now, its drawing can’t be found in SAAMI or CIP standards), finding proper barrel blanks, ordering custom reamers and gauges and so on. However, as you have guessed from the title of this article, there are people in the industry who despite the mentioned issues managed to build firearms chambered in 9x39mm.

Currently boosting a force of over 30,000 fighters, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) has always been a force of reckoning on the Burmese border with China. And although arms production among the Wa (northern Shan State) isn’t a new or hot topic ( this Irrawaddy article documenting such production in 2008), there have has been very little written about exactly what is being produced and how to tell it apart. Both the armed factions of the Wa and the Kachin ethnic groups will publicly and proudly claim that their small arms are entirely produced domestically. Although both ethnic armies do have a limited assembly ability and the Kachin appear to manufacture their own mortars, the nexus behind both groups originates from neighbouring China in the form of Type 81 derivatives.

Here is your daily Public Service Announcement. Don’t shoot .300blk out of an AK chambered in 7.62x39mm. This was my mistake. Fortunately, nothing bad happened.

Bad Element Co has been modifying AK magazines. Cutting windows into the sides of metal mags and various other modifications. Earlier this year he made an OTS-14 Groza Pistol.

In two previous articles on TFB we looked at the Burmese MA-Sniper in-depth while being used in the field by Tatmadaw Infantrymen. If readers recall there were a number of different variants of the MA-Sniper, to include early attempts at modifying MA-2 Light Machine Guns with optics. An interesting twist in this history is that variants of the MA-Sniper were actually modified to be used in the ASEAN Armies Rifle Match competition that is held annually. These variants have not been seen in service in the field and are very different from what we have seen in service with the Burmese Army’s operational forces. Although there isn’t much information available on these rifles, one of the variants was actually on the logo of the 23rd AARM competition held in Burma in 2013!

Today at The Firearm Blog we have exclusive AK-related information for you. Brandon Herrera, also known as The AK Guy, informed us about the release of his first production model AK called AKG-47. Brandon has earlier launched a limited edition commemorative rifle that we talked about on TFB. Today, he is introducing a production model that will be made in large quantities and will be available both on the company’s website and via its dealers.

Photographs have emerged of a captured Islamic State weapons cache which has an impressive range of firearms. The stockpile of weapons and explosive materials was captured by a rival Syrian group HTS. The cache included a wide variety of pistols, submachine guns, rifle and light machine guns from sources all over the world.

These days everyone is adding the lightest most tactical handguards to their rifles. People are debating MLOK vs Keymod, what’s the best weapons light to mount to their AK-47 handguard, what’s the best new tacticool do-dad, etc. All the while some dude on Instagram thought, “I’m going to make some handguards for my AK out of a log!”.

A US Navy destroyer, the USS Jason Dunham, intercepted a skiff in the Gulf of Aden and discovered over 1,000 AK-pattern rifles. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer dispatched search teams to a ‘stateless skiff’ in international waters on 28th August.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the press secretary of the Ministry of Defence of Armenia, has published on his social media pages a post announcing about a contract signed between the Kalashnikov Concern and an Armenian company called Royalsys Engineering Ltd concerning the licensed manufacturing of AK-12 and AK-15 rifles in Armenia.

Occam Defense Solutions has introduced a new AK handguard called MERC. This is a patent pending design which is advertised to decrease the heat transfer to the shooter’s hand and provide a solid optics mounting platform for AK family of rifles. Let’s take a closer look at the features of this product.

There was a little confusion last week since we rolled the results in with the new BOTW. We listened and split the posts.

In the early 2000s, after the assault weapon ban was lifted and Kalashnikov rifles started to gain popularity on the US market, a lot of shooters were looking to learn the original Russian way to run an AK.

AC-Unity is a firearms and accessories manufacturing company located in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have recently started exporting new quad stack 60-round 7.62x39mm AK magazines to the USA. This company and its products are mostly unknown to the American gun community that’s why I decided to do a little research to find out who they are and what they make.

Today, Kalashnikov Group (Russia) presented new assault rifle prototype called AK-308 at the International Military-Technical Forum “Army-2018”

Your enemy is the best teacher when it comes to combat. In a move that appears to be imitating what the Kachin Independence Army pioneered in 2010 when it comes to bullet trap rifle grenades being fired from locally assembled Type 81 derivatives (the Chinese Type 81 already uses one, but they tried a different method), Burmese Defense Industries has introduced a rifle grenade firing capable variant of the 5.56x45mm Myanmar Army (MA) family of infantry small arms (locally produced Galil ARM). At the current time it appears that the nomenclature of this variation is the MA MK II. Thus, MA-1 MK II (full-length rifle), MA-3 MK II (folding stock carbine), and the MA-4 MK II (UBGL variant). It most likely isn’t the case that the MA-2 has been retrofitted to fire rifle grenades as a light machine gun platform being used for that purpose is rare anywhere in the world. In addition, the MA-2 MK II is the new 7.62x54mmR variant of the LMG. In addition there has been modifications to the MA-3 carbine, but if the folding stock can withstand the recoil of the grenade isn’t known either.