9-Hole and Brandon Herrera discuss perhaps the saddest chapter in the AK’s history… the modern one.
The AK-12 is just a colossal colostomy bag of disappointment and takes everything that had been done so well with the Kalashnikov rifle series and undoes so much of it. The AK-100 and AK-200 series were excellent examples of keeping the rifle modern and companies have long since figured out how to run modern equipment on the rifle.
And then the AK-12 happened.
And then the Russian brought the AK-12’s to Ukraine…
And then the captured guns kinda… sucked. They didn’t even have optics on them despite that being almost entirely the point of modernizing the guns. Much fail.
Meanwhile companies like RS Regulate, SLR Rifleworks, and full on manufacturers like IWI have succeeded in modernizing the AK in various and highly competitive ways and the things are awesome! The additions, most very cost effective, bring the rifles into alignment with modern standards set by the AR-15, being plenty accurate for their respective calibers and able to work with suppression, lights, lasers, and optic suites.
It is puzzling why Russia would so short change themselves on a rifle when they were going to war. Budget cuts are a real thing but rifles aren’t that expensive.
