The AN-94 is available to some units in very small quantities. It never reached full scale production, and it's going to die the quiet death that has been coming to it for a long time. Think of it as Russia's equivalent of the Stoner 63 series of rifles and MGs - technically interesting, a possible contender at one point, but overtaken by economics and it's own complexity. It's a very rare weapon for any unit to have. It's hardly standard. That you seem to repeatedly discuss a 'sub calibre' or 'sub round' like it is meaningful in this context is strange. They fire the same 7n6, 7n10 and 7n22 5.45mm rounds as the AK-74.
That five individuals didn't miss a target is devoid of meaning without context. The same five individuals given an M4, a BM59 or a No4 Lee Enfield, could do exactly the same thing. What is technically impressive about the AN-94 is that it can place a burst of automatic fire very accurately. The drawback is that it's a finicky and difficult-to-maintain piece of equipment.
I'm not Mirhond, but it's a topic that I'm interested in.
It's a semi-informative article. The AK107 isn't actually part of the same family of other AK100 series weapons in anything but name, it uses the same action as the AN-94. It is effectively a prototype, and apart from some civilian sales (that haven't materialised because they haven't actually been built yet), it will have the same fate as the AN-94.
In context of the 100 series, maybe. They certainly didn't stop using their Austrian-built Glocks when they began their own licenced production. I'd like to know where this tidbit of information comes from.
You haven't yet understood the development of the 100 series and their link to the AK-74M, nor the fact that Izhmash would have been the manufacturer of whatever rifle was adopted, AK-74M or AN-94.
Towards the end of the existence of the Soviet Union, there were developments that were intended to replace the AK-74. The AK-74 was based on the AKM, which had been first produced in the very late 1950s. Obviously, there had been some developments in the manufacturing processes and materials used between 1959 and 1989. The rifle that became the AN-94 was intended to be the rifle to replace the AK-74. Of course, this did not end up happening. The Russians decided to spend the least money possible and upgrade the AK-74 in the interim to become more compatible with modern manufacturing methods and materials, and in 1991 the AK-74M became what the US military would consider Standard A. As seems to be the case with interim solutions, it became permanent. Particularly after the abysmal performance of pre-production AN-94s in Chechnya.
Do not confuse the AK-74 as being the same weapon as the AK-74M. It's not, and there are important differences. It was not a case of recalling AK-74s, rebuilding them as AK-74Ms and sending them out for issue as a new rifle. These are new builds.
Having adopted a new rifle, the Russians needed to develop a new equivalent of the AKS-74U, as they had stopped building the receivers used to build them when production switched to the AK-74M. This would become the AK105.
The AK101, 102, 103 and 104 were not developed to become the "new rifle for a new Army", because they'd just adopted the AK-74M, built on the same tooling. It was a marketing decision to build AK-74Ms and AK105s chambered for the two other major world-wide rifle calibres, for sure, but it was never expected that the various Russian armed forces would issue a 5.56x45mm or 7.62x39mm weapon for general issue. Russia was/is very heavily invested in the 5.45x39mm cartridge. Even the AN-94 is 5.45mm. I suspect that Izhmash were very surprised to get orders for AK103s and 104s from within Russia, but there's still some very impressive stocks of 7.62x39mm in some branches of the Russian forces.
Probably worth pointing out that when the AK-74M was adopted, there were still shortages of even the old model AK-74. Hell, some units were still using the SKS well into the second half of the 1980s. The glut of AK-74s is very much a 21st Century phenomenon for Russia.
And after using them (or trying to) in Chechnya and Dagestan, it was discovered that they weren't acceptable for issue as a replacement for the AK-74M.
What I believe is that the situation of building takeovers in the last day or two aren't actually being conducted by Russian military personnel, but rather pro-Russian Ukrainians.
If I was the Minister of the Interior and I suspected that the Russians were pulling the strings, I'd be telling the world anything I could think of to implicate them, regardless of their physical presence and/or evidence. So we end up with fictional AN-94 wielding Russian military personnel. Pending photographic evidence, I believe he's either lying, or he doesn't know what he is talking about.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. The second part of this paragraph is odd, because any non-5.45x39mm weapon is going to stand out like the proverbial dog's bollocks (and believe me, every piece of footage containing a previously-unseen weapon in Ukraine is being documented in several open source forums), as are AK105s. Reference the fellow with the M4 clone being tracked down and corresponded with on Twitter in the last few days. I certainly believe that if the Ukrainians actually spotted someone carrying a 9A-91 or SR-3M on a CCTV camera (as both weapons are Russian-only and actually issued in significant numbers, as well as being ideal for urban warfare), we'd have seen it within a very short time.
The first part of your paragraph, that if an SOF soldier trains on a weapon, he deploys with it, is a very broad statement. The SASR boys here do their kill-house training with MP5s (kill-house ballistic walls here are only rated for 9mm, not 5.56), they sure don't use them in Afghanistan in any notable quantity. MARSOC teams have trained like hell with their M45s and deployed with Glock 19s or M9A1s.
If you're looking for a defining 'a-ha, only Russians use that gun' moment, you'll be waiting awhile. If you're happy to have a defining 'wow, that's a whole lot of AK-74Ms, they've got to be Russians' moment, then I haven't had one of those moments in anywhere but Crimea as yet. Believe me, as a gun-buff/geardo/military history nerd, I'd be literally beside myself with fascination and wonder if an AN-94 turned up somewhere.
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