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Small arms giant Izhmash has begun production of Russia’s long anticipated AK-12, the 2012 replacement for the AK-74. From the photos, it’s safe to say that it’s much improved, yet still at heart a Kalashnikov rifle. Mikhail could approve.
The first big change is rails. You might have noticed that Picatinny’s standard on the AK-12, although without photos of the left side of the rifle, we can’t assume that it doesn’t also have a side mount. It would be a tight fit, as it’s supposed to have ambidextrous, thumb-actuated selectors.
Yep, there are two. One is a safety and the other is a rate-of-fire switch. It’s capable of single-shot, 3-round burst, and full auto fire. It’s safe to say that internally, it’s different; the pins aren’t in the same places. The AK-12 also has a reciprocating dust cover, to match the reciprocating bolt.
The gas block gets a Picatinny rail, too, even though it comes with a familiar-looking front sight post. With the rear sight mounted at the very end of the receiver, the AK-12′s got a ridiculously long sight radius. If you look closely at the rear sight, you’ll notice that it’s a standard AK sight mounted into a detachable block, which strikes us as incredibly Russian.-[source]
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