Anastasia Chernenko posted this photo of herself shooting her AK. Take a closer look at her magazine. It looks like she taped an AK handguard on the leading edge of the magazine to act like a mag pod. While not perfectly secure it should do just nicely for competition.

While I lament the need for various “featureless” weapon’s features to be featured, I am not immune to the need for featureless features to be featured. Simply put, due to various laws, the featureless features are indeed needed.

Created during the Iran-Iraq War, the Tabuk Sniper is one of those oddballs of historical firearms. Although referred to as a “Sniper” rifle, it really never was one to begin with. Chambered in 7.62x39mm, the rifle was intended as a squad or platoon support weapon to compliment the RPK within Saddam’s army. It is essentially based on the Yugo M76 but not chambered in 8mm Mauser, built of course by Yugoslavian engineers cooperating with Iraq.

Just when you think it can’t get any easier to load a magazine, ETS comes along and forges a new loader that purports to work across almost all double-stack semi-auto platforms. Its so good, I am convinced that Jim Hanson (owner of ETS) is perhaps the modern inventive dark load of the magazine:

While the 7.62×39 Russian round enjoys a reputation as a fantastic overall cartridge, it has sadly been largely relegated to generally inaccurate platforms. Now, before the fanboys get all over me, yes, the AK can be accurate – its just harder to get one than say an AR or bolt-action. Fortunately, that is changing. With the success of the Howa mini-action, it seems that Ruger cannot let the offshore-made rifle have its way with the bolt-action market.

The next time I am back home, I am going to ask if I can flip through my old school notebooks. After following Pew Doodles on Instagram for a few weeks, I had a flood of memories taking me back to daydreaming in school while drawing all types of guns. From M16s to fantasy space blasters, I’m pretty sure I sketched them all.

A recent news report in Arabic has highlighted the efforts of opposition forces in Yemen to emplace IEDs within Kalashnikov magazines, just above the floor plates of the magazines themselves. The magazines have several rounds loaded, around 4-8 to be precise. The tactic employed appears to necessitate the rounds being taken out of the magazine, either by hand or by actually firing them in a rifle. When the spring pressure has weakened enough, or the follower has reached a certain point, this connects an electrical circuit, completing the process of ignition and thereby blowing the main charge within the magazine itself, with the ends to seriously injure or kill the user of the magazine. Yemeni security forces took these magazines while searching a vehicle enroute to San’a, and made them safe. However, it would appear that the magazines were intended to be battlefield pick ups, or otherwise emplaced around security forces that would find them, either unload them manually or shoot the cartridges.

Kalashnikov Concern recently released a new English language video regarding their PL-15K compact pistol, MP-444 pistol, AM-17 and AMB-17 compact assault rifles, and SVCh semiautomatic sniper rifle. By way of a walkthrough from Kalashnikov Concern technical consultant Vladimir Onokoy, the video offers English speakers an important look at the technical features of the new weapons, which were until now something of a mystery to those on this side of the language barrier. The video is embedded below, followed by a written summary:

A Bulgarian investigative journalist by the name of Dilyana Gaytandzhiev has published an article vigorously detailing the activities of the Azerbaijani state run airline Silk Way in providing arms shipments across the MENA region and Africa in the airlines diplomatic capacity. Not only does it appear that U.S. Special Operations Command is using the airline to transport massive amounts of small arms and ammunition from Eastern Europe to groups in Syria, but also such customers as Saudi Arabia, and Kurdish state actors in addition to possibly much more. The majority of the shipments appear to be rocket launchers and associated ammunition, but there are numerous amounts of Kalashnikov variants mixed in among the shipments as well. W e actually had a post on TFB about shipments from Bulgaria to Kurdistan as early as 2008, so the Silk Way connection might not be that far off in this regard.

Taiwan’s 205th Armory small arms design bureau has unveiled a 7.62x51mm NATO Designated Marksman’s rifle at the 2017 Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition as evidenced by the Sohu news agency. Designated the XT107, it is a 7.62x51mm NATO version of a modular 5.56x45mm NATO rifle of the same name. Taiwan has had this modular service rifle in development since at least 2013 with the XT97, later renamed the XT105 in 2015, and appears to have been renamed XT107 in the latest iteration. Unfortunately, we haven’t had an in-depth look at the internals of the rifle since the XT97 so we cannot discuss at length about what changes the design has undergone. However, one thing is for sure and that is Taiwanese Defense Forces still appear to be armed with the 5.56x45mm NATO T91 service rifle, and as of now we don’t have any information showing if the adoption of a new service rifle will take place in the near future.

It is absolutely amazing what can be made with some low tech machinery, raw materials and years of experience. Having built a few AKs of my own, I know first hand the difficulty of building a gun from a parts kit. However taking metal, wood, and now apparently polymer, and making a functioning pistol is true craftsmanship. YouTube user ‘ABKTheReal’ uploaded a series of short videos from the Tribal Region of Pakistan that includes a polymer Khyber Pass Sig P320 or P250.

Essentially Yugoslavian 7.62x39mm M70B1 rifles, the Tabuk series of small arms were produced in Iraq, with the help of Yugoslavian engineers in the late 1970s, just in time for the Iran-Iraq conflict that endured for an agonizing decade afterward. There were different iterations of the Tabuk, the standard rifle with wood stock, an underfolder, an RPK variant, a “Krink” version with a 12-inch barrel, and finally the Tabuk Sniper, but we’ll leave that topic for next week when we can devote an entire episode to it.

Within the last couple of months, Rifle Dynamics has been releasing short Q&A videos where Jim Fuller, the founder of RD, was answering to customers’ questions and showing some AK manipulation drills. I’ll post these videos in chronological order.

We recently received an excellent opportunity to tour Apex Gun Parts, which you can read about on a recent TFB post here. During the tour we got a chance to sit down with Jeff Salvig and really ask him some in-depth questions about the surplus industry and how he got into it himself, eventually starting his company, Apex Arms. I think Jeff serves as an example to the rest of us, that he started out just as a very passionate collector and through hard work and determination, brought together one of the better companies in the industry when it comes to surplus inventories.

A live webcast from the Concern Kalashnikov shooting club was broadcasted last weekend as part of the Army 2017 exhibition.

Thanks Miles V. for sharing this photo of a PKM in Chechnya.

As you can see from our recent articles, Kalashnikov Concern has introduced a number of new products during the ARMY-2017 exhibition. Besides the firearms which we wrote about in separate articles, there were many other new products that are either not entirely small arms related or are prototypes with a very little information available about. Many of them won’t “qualify” for a separate article, that’s why I’ve decided to combine them in this article.

Apex Gun Parts is a surplus importer and distributor based in Colorado Springs, that stocks a large amount of inventory for the surplus parts and parts kits manufacturing industries in the United States. The owner, Jeff Selvig was kind enough to give TFB a personal tour of the warehouse and some of the behind the scenes inventory that the company sells through its online presence, in addition as a wholesaler to various manufacturers and stores throughout the industry. Unlike other portions of the firearms industry, the surplus sector is very unique. For one, the collectors and shooters that make it up can be a very passionate group that pursue their historical tastes very thoroughly. Also unlike other parts of the industry, the surplus one is directly tied to the supply of parts and importation of them as well. When they dry up, there can be little hope of new ones entering the market. On the other hand, politics can greatly influence the market that take down importation bans.

Kalashnikov enthusiasts and parts kid builders in the United States have long known about the “sterilized” East German (GDR/DDR-German Democratic Republic/Deutschland Demokratische Republik) MPi-KM kits coming in from the Balkan states. These kits have been imported into the United States for a number of years, sometimes diminishing or increasing in supply so they certainly aren’t rare or unavailable by any means. However, compared to more common kit builds with non-sanitized factory markings, these ones are harder to come by and usually aren’t advertised much. The issue of not having serialized components as per ATF doesn’t exist because to the ATF these are nothing but pieces of metal. The serialized component is when the actual receiver is produced and is turned into a firearm by incorporating the parts kits, thus manufacturing one.

“Archer” is the public nickname of a Polish volunteer currently fighting in the highly contested city of Raqqa with the Kurdish Peshmerga forces working right now to take it from the so called Islamic State. Countless U.S. and European volunteers have gone over to Syria to help out the Kurds in their struggle, some of them even giving their lives in the conflict. But from the amount of information that we receive from these volunteers, their direct involvement in the action, and their previous experience levels, this former Polish soldier appears to be very hard to beat when compared to many of the others since 2014 when American Jordan Matson became one of the first widely covered volunteers.

Recent so-called Islamic State propaganda videos and an individual Twitter account within Syri a have posted numerous examples of improvised suppressors in use on a wide variety of precision rifles and anti-material rifles.The Twitter account simply mentions that the rifles belong to “Brothers” and “Sunni” fighters, which could literally be any one of the tens of opposition groups in the conflict. Most of these suppressors or cylindrical flash hiders appear to be made out of pre-constructed materials such as a flashlight or other metal tubes. With the exception of one, they appear to be direct thread as well. Although very simple to employ, direct thread brings with it the possibility of the suppressor unscrewing itself unless there is a method of locking.

Like many Vets these days, Steve Russell was very frustrated that he or any of the soldiers under his command couldn’t actually bring back captured rifles from their campaigns overseas, unlike previous generations of American infantrymen. So if you can’t bring back rifles, maybe the next best step is to make them? This is exactly what Steve did with Two River Arms, a company in Oklahoma City that makes excellent copies of Iraqi Tabuks from Yugo M72 parts kits, complete with Iraqi markings in Arabic and all. The niche that this company fills is extremely unique and small for that matter, very unlike most any Kalashnikov producing companies in the AK business. They are uniquely tied into the conflicts of our era that directly connects the small arms from those conflicts.

Armageddon Tactical is a Littleton, Colorado-based company that produces and sells various firearms parts, mostly in the AR15 field of accessories, but with this new product, the company has stepped forth into the world of Kalashnikov components. The AK47 Hinged Side Rail Mount is a folding picatinny rail mount that is designed to clip onto the side of an AKM or AK74 receiver’s optic rails, providing a picatinny mount for the rifle that allows the use of the traditional iron sights already mounted to it by unclipping and folding the entire mount to the left of the rifle. There are numerous picatinny mounting options out there for the Kalashnikov platform, but none that allow the entire mount to flip to the left of the rifle as this one does. Unlike the AR15, where the picatinny rails allow for a co-witnessing of iron sights against mounted 1X optics that are fixed in place via an attachment system (negating quick removal of the optic if it goes down), the Kalashnikov iron sights are placed at a very low height to the top of the receiver. Currently, there aren’t many products that allow optics to be mounted AND allow shooters to still use their iron sights should their optics go down.

As a result of the alarming crime rates recently recorded in Rio de Janeiro and the extreme violence of the local crime war — 97 police officers killed on and off duty so far (mid August) this year – it has frequently happened that the Brazilian Armed Forces are brought to action to give LE agencies a helping hand, as in the case of major international sports events. This has again occurred in the last few weeks, mainly as a result of a serious economic crisis involving the local State Government. Since our “Firearms, not Politics” motto is still in full effect, I will refrain from discussing delayed salary payments (LE included), extremely inadequate budgets for training and material acquisition (LE included), limited political support for workers (LE included), etc (LE included here, too)… That clearly explained,  the photo report that follows shows the weaponry seen in use by civil (PCERJ) and military (PMERJ) state police agents, plus armed forces personnel, in Rio de Janeiro and the nearby (across the Guanabara Bay) city of Niterói during the last few days.

Thanks to Hrachya for sharing this. This was posted on Made In Russia Facebook page.

Dat Viet, a Vietnamese language news website has reported that the production of Vietnamese made bolt-action, five round magazine-fed12.7x108mm KSVK anti-material rifles has commenced at the Israeli IWI built, Vietnamese MoD owned factory Z111 in Vietnam. The factory has churned out Galil ACEs for some time now, to also include Galil Snipers, Negevs, Uzis, and even Negev light machine guns for the Vietnamese Peoples Army. This would make Vietnam the first and only country to be fully equipped with the 7.62x39mm version of the Galil ACE.

The Polish national Central Board of Prison Services has released a solicitation for 600 5.56x45mm rifles and 500 pump action, tubular-magazine fed shotguns. Currently, the Government service has a number of Polish MSBS rifles in the inventory, the most recent of such were seen on parade in a memorial service held by the Central Board of Prison Services. These rifles were also seen in use with what appears to be 10 round magazines inserted. At this point we are guessing that it was a ceremonial practice, possibly loaded with blank rounds Although most likely not used within prisons, the rifles are most likely designated for the special response teams, or more realistically perimeter guards who have to cover long distances around prisons. As is evidenced in the memorial video below, these new MSBS rifles could possibly be ordered to replace Kalashnikov rifles still in service with certain contingents of the Prison Services.

Several months ago FAB Defense has introduced a new AR-15 buffer tube compatible stock called GL-CORE. Recently they have released an upgraded version of that stock which features a three-position adjustable cheek riser added to the initial design. The new stock is called GL-CORE CP.

Good news, everyone! Strike Industries has yet another new product in the works. All kidding aside, those guys pump out new stuff weekly it seems. This time around Strike Industries has a product for AK-47 owners in the great state of California. If you’ve been living under a rock or have been too busy reading about Sig P320 posts I’ll fill you in, California’s leaders are ill informed to say the least and they’ve passed laws forcing their residents to either register their AKs, ARs etc as “assault rifles” or they have to take off all the scary evil parts. The pistol grip being one of them.

Ah, adjustable gas block, you nimble little minx. For so long you have preferred the AR flavor of rifle, shunning your Eastern Block cousins. Oh sure, there have been boutique shop runs of AK blocks that require a competent smith that go by the name of Boris or Mikhail. But why do you tempt the rest of us? AK47/74 trigger pullers deserve to suppress their rifles or run crappy ammo like everyone else, damn it! Luckily, times are changing, and this upcoming release from Dead Goose Society is evidence of that fact.