#KalashnikovConcern

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.

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

In this article, we’ll take a brief look at the history of creation and intellectual property rights transition of the Russian “Baikal” brand name which I am sure many of you are familiar with. This article is based on one published by  Kalashnikov Media.

Modern Firearms website has published a new article telling about the official release of the 200-series of AK rifles. These rifles represent the next generation and evolution of the 100-series of AKs. In fact, they’ve been around for about a year but didn’t have the 200-series model designation.

Kalashnikov Concerns Media site have shared a video of Larry Vickers testing out their latest carbine, the AM-17. Vickers recently visited Kalashnikov’s production facilities in Izhevsk, Russia and had the chance to handle and shoot some of their latest products.

As predicted by many Russian experts, the .366 TKM and 9.6x53mm Lancaster cartridges quickly became highly popular in Russian civilian market. This success led Russian companies to develop new guns chambered in these calibers. In this article, we will take a look at three new Russian rifles chambered in .366 TKM or 9.6x53mm Lancaster.

On April 12, 2018, Russian RIA Novosti news agency has published an article telling about the upcoming negotiations of Russian and Indian officials concerning the licensed manufacturing of 100-series AK rifles in India. This information was released during the DefExpo 2018 arms exhibition by Vladimir Drozhzhov, the deputy director of Russian Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation.

According to Kalashnikov Concern and TASS Russian News Agency, the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant (a subsidiary of Kalashnikov Concern) is preparing for the mass production of Lebedev pistols in the foreseeable future.

At the end of the past month, we reported about the  adoption of AK-12, AK-15, AEK-971, and AEK-973 rifles by the Russian military. Back then it was not clear if they are going to adopt the RPK-16 light machine gun, too. Today,  Kalashnikov Concern and TASS news agency announced that the Kalashnikov Concern and the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation have signed a contract concerning the procurement of RPK-16 LMGs. In other words, Russia has adopted the RPK-16.

Kalashnikov USA, orphaned stateside importing partner of Kalashnikov Concern, brought their latest prototype and production guns to the 2018 SHOT Show, and there is good reason to be excited. Chief among them: The KR-9 9mm AK carbine.

SR1 is a balanced action rifle made by Kalashnikov Concern for the competition shooting market. We have earlier reported about this rifle which was shown during the Arms & Hunting 2017 exhibition. A couple of days ago, Kalashnikov Media released a video showing the pre-production prototype and revealing more details about this gun. To watch that video, click the link below:

Kalashnikov Concern has released a video of their MP-446C VIKING-M competition pistol in action via their Kalashnikov Media site.

Kalashnikov Media has started a video series called “Kalashnikov: Around the World”. The purpose of these videos is to tell about the Kalashnikov rifles made in different countries of the world. This video series consists of short videos briefly teasing separate rifles ( like AMP-69 that we posted about earlier) and more comprehensive ones in a format of an interview where Vladimir Onokoy, the technical consultant of Kalashnikov Concern, is the host and Pavel Pticin, the founder of ak-info.ru website, is the guest.

According to Russian news agency TASS, during the Dubai Air Show 2017, Sergey Chemazov, the CEO of the Russian state corporation Rostec, has announced that 26% (minus one share) of Kalashnikov Concern will be sold to private investors. The decision is already made and awaits approval from the government of Russian Federation.

Kalashnikov Media continue their fascinating series looking at rare Russian small arms, the latest video brings us a look at an early, pre-production prototype AKS.