Interesting video of the AN-94

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I heard that rifle didn't quite live up to the hype of putting the first two rounds in the same hole and hence defeating Level IV armor.

What's the consensus on that thing?
 
It's a technical marvel but a completely pointless one at that. It's complicated to make, there are no 5.45 countries wealthy or interested enough to adopt it. It's expensive. It's pretty much a turkey. Abakan designed the gun without first asking anyone if they wanted a new gun.
 
Russia wants to switch the standard issue rifle from the AK 74 to the AN 94 but money issues and the fact that they aren't at war or anything is what's preventing them.
 
Now that they're testing the new AK-12, I doubt we'll ever see them adopt the An-94. I'd certainly love a chance to try an AN-94 to see just how well it works but that won't be happening anytime soon. The recoil on the 5.45 AK-74s doesn't really seem that bad to me...so I suspect it was often a question of will this expensive AN-94 really make a big difference for troops in the field and I suspect they often thought the cost didn't justify the gains.
 
The AN-94 proved to not have near the reliability of the AK due to its complexity, and was expensive. As a result, it's been effectively shelved. The AK-12 will probably take its place, since it's got modern assault rifle capabilities at a reasonable cost.
 
Why bother we all know Germans can make much better weapons and Russians only modified/improved copies of them. The AK 47 concept was stolen from Stg 44 and Makarov from Walther PPK.
 
Mikhail began work on the AK before he know about the MP-44. The Ministry of Defense asked for an intermediate caliber automatic carbine to be made and Mr. Kalashnikov set about making the simplest automatic weapon he could. His gun looks like the MP-44 and follows the same concept and uses a similar round, but they are mechanically very different. The AK's internal design is actually more similar to that of the M1 Garand, though Mikhail did take bits and pieces from many different firearms.

The Makarov is an original design rather than a slightly modified variation on the PP.
 
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What's the deal with the mag out of axis?
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It has to do with the reciprocating barrel. I don't know enough about the design to explain exactly why but because of what they did there they had to put the magazine well in off axis.

Why bother we all know Germans can make much better weapons and Russians only modified/improved copies of them. The AK 47 concept was stolen from Stg 44 and Makarov from Walther PPK.
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Not really. Internally they're all very different. While it's true Mikhail Kalashnikov was inspired by the design layout of the STG 44 mechanically there are some significant differences. The AK uses a rotating bolt where the STG 44 uses a tilting bolt. The Action on an AK is actually much more similiar to an M1 Garand. Now the VZ58 on the other hand, that rifle is actually very similiar to the STG44.

As for the Makarov and the PPK. They're not even close internally. The parts counts are completely different. The Walther uses 41 parts. The PPK has 27.

So yeah, you can say that they all look similiar. But so much of the internal functioning of the weapons is completely different.
 
What's the consensus on that thing?
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It's a Russian gun, which means it probably started with a unique and interesting concept, and then they proceeded to bludgeon that concept to death with shoddy engineering, poor quality control, and over-heated claims about the rifle's capabilities.
 
The muzzle brake alone is interesting, it's said to be even more effective than the AK-74 style brake but it seems like a lot of design effort was made to ensure that it's also much less damaging to the hearing.

This device must be fairly expensive and difficult to manufacture however, or else we might have seen it go onto the the Ak-12 instead of what looks like an improved AK-74 brake.
 
The AK 47 concept was stolen from Stg 44 and Makarov from Walther PPK.
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Not quite. The Stg. 44 and the AK have almost nothing in common except for a similar external appearance. As others have noted, Kalashnikov drew inspiration in part from the Garand.

It's a Russian gun, which means it probably started with a unique and interesting concept, and then that concept was bludgeoned to death with shoddy engineering, poor quality control, and over-heated claims about the rifle's capabilities.
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I don't think I'd agree with you there Justin. Not everything produced in Russia is plagued by shoddy engineering and poor quality control...particularly a prototype weapon. They tend to pull out the stops when it comes to weapons development (and it's the commercial market that suffered for it quality and quantity wise).

I think the AN-94 hit problems in that it was simply too complex. If there's one consistent theme in Russian weapons, it's simplicity. They see this as a sign of reliability, easy to learn to use, and easy/quick/cheap to produce (since they like to have a huge stockpiles of arms...a hold over attitude from lessons learned at the beginning of the "Great Patriotic War") and they would be right that simple usually yields those results. It was going to be a very hard sell to Russian military brass if the benefits were slight and at the cost of a much more complex rifle (which would require a complete shift in small arms attitudes among the Russian military). There weren't problems with the production of the rifle, it just wasn't what they were looking for which was something simple, easy, rugged and available in quantity quickly.
 
A more recent trend in Russian small arms is specialization, instead of "one size fits all" they're starting to go the way of having a optimized design for each role, as seen by the multitude of CQB oriented and integrally suppressed designs put out in recent years.

With all the other options they have to handle the CQB role, from the ASh-12.7 and 9x39 guns, with their formidable armor piercing capabilities and stopping power, they probably figured it was no longer worth the while to try to monkey around with the complex, problematic AN-94 design intended to get the most of the 5.45 cartridge in CQB while still being suitable as a general issue assault rifle.

The relatively low cost of Russian small arms and the fact that the specialized arms only seem to be issued to specialized troops makes this "arms room concept" viable for them.
 
The off axis magazine is necessary for the AN-94's hyper burst feature. IIRC how it works is each round is fed through a pre-feeding mechanism in the gun. So at the ready, there is a round in the chamber and another in the pre-feed mechanism. When it is fired, the spent is ejected and the new round rapidly loaded from the pre-feeder, and also fired. All this happens before the gun has a chance to fully recoil inside the housing.
 
It's too bad, it definitely is a really neat design. It's nice to see a rear sight mounted on the rear end of the receiver for an AK-type rifle for once too, to give it a longer sight radius. I've always found the standard ironsights to be dreadful.
 
Shotgun news had a great write up about the AN94 a while back. If i recall correctly the first two did rounds did not penetrate the same hole exactly but were more than close enough for their intended purpose of degrading a ceramic plate and then penetrating. The muzzle device is also supposed to reduce audio and visual report. I also seem to recall reading somewhere that other guns have been designed with the hyper burst capability and the US army has indicated the requirement for it's next standard issue rifle. As youngster mentioned the Russian military has seemed to be moving towards more specialization.
 
Hopefully some country like Bulgaria adopts it, then drops it completely allowing us to get parts kits! :D

Unfortunately no hyper burst would be currently allowed.
 
Hopefully some country like Bulgaria adopts it, then drops it completely allowing us to get parts kits!
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Due to the hyper burst i'd be highly surprised if the ATF ever allowed that. I would suspect this guns function would fall into the 'too easy to convert to FA' category like open bolt fire.
 
I've handled the real thing, although never had the chance to fire one.

I will say that I found the ergonomics quite uncomfortable, particularly the pistol grip, although I couldn't really pin down any one reason why.

Just between the pistol grip and the angled magazine, it was not very comfortable when I handled it.
 
Due to the hyper burst i'd be highly surprised if the ATF ever allowed that. I would suspect this guns function would fall into the 'too easy to convert to FA' category like open bolt fire.
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If people make still legal semi auto Stens, then they could make Semi auto AN94s.
 
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