In Fiction[]
Appearance[]
Like the other AK variants, she has short hair and feline like tail and ears with hers being blonde in color. She also wears Akaganekou's standard two-stripe uniform.
Personality[]
Having only been in two panels on one page of the manga, we don't know anything about her other than AKM trusts her to organize the forces at Hakone against Seishou.
In Real Life[]
History[]
Russia, in the late 1970s, decided that there was a need to design a new rifle that would compete with rapidly improving western gun designs to stay competitive with them in the realm of small arms.
Thus the Soviets launched project Abakan, where they spent more than ten years trialing nine different rifle designs, all with different operating systems to try and make a rifle with at least twice the effectiveness of the AK-74.
Koksharov submitted the AEK-971 as an example of the balanced automatic recoil system to reduce recoil impulse to a minimum by eliminating three of the four instances of recoil. However, this version of the AEK-971 had a few major design differences that made it different from the final production version.
Mainly the first prototype had a muzzle break that had a lever in which a user could control muzzle climb with the lever by closing off ports in the muzzle break. It also had a 1500 RPM as opposed to the 800-900 RPM cyclic rate of the production version.
While in the trials, the AEK-971 was actually well like for its control in automatic fire, even beating the AN-94 (at the time called the Nikonov ASM) in fully automatic fire and three round burst accuracy. Albeit it lost to the ASM in two round burst accuracy. All this praise did not win it the Abakan project though as in the end, the ASM became the AN-94 Abakan.
In the late 1990s the Russian Defense Ministry brought back the AEK-971 design to be used by the MVD and Russian Military. Kovrov City Arsenal even made several variations of the rifle, the AEK-972 and AEK-973 in 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm respectively, for use within Russian Forces. Another bump in the road of AEK-971's adoption appeared though as in 2006 Kovrov factory ceased all military production.
2014 brought new life into the AEK-971's service and more trials began with select usage in several Russian military groups in tandem with the release of the AK12. Both rifles would be adopted by the Russian military in 2018 with the AEK-971 with border patrol, special forces, and national guard units because of it's larger cost and complication, and the AK-12 being used by regular infantry forces.
Performance[]
The new balanced recoil system was considered a game changer in weapons design. Giving the AEK-971 unparalleled recoil control while in full auto. In fact, while Defense Minister Igor Rodionov was pushing the rifle, he had a test done with the AEK-921, AK-74, and AN-94 on a one meter target at a range of 100m while firing from standing in full auto. Of the thirty rounds fired the AK-74 made one on target, the AN-94 had two on target, and the AEK-971 had 18 on target.
The AEK-971 achieves this with a counter-balancing system that uses gas from the round to move an operating rod linked to the bolt carrier and a piston attached to a steel counterbalance. These two equal movements help to negate recoil produced by the bolt carrier moving back in the receiver. Another recoil mitigation is the muzzle break design, while similar to the AK-74 is more effective at reducing muzzle climb.
The safety selector is also considered improved to the original AK as not only is it a four position selector but is considered easier to manipulate when raising the weapon to be fired.
While it has huge improvements over almost all other AK variants, the major downside to the AEK-971 is it's propensity to heat up more than other rifles while firing in full auto. This may be due not only to its high cyclic rate, but also the fact that it uses hot gas to push a piston near the hand guard as part of its recoil balancing system.
Users[]
Russia:
- MVD National Police
- Adopted by Russian Military [2018]
Availability[]
Unless you are Spetsnas or MVD you are not going to get your hand on one as they only just got accepted as a service rifle for the Russian military at the time of writing. If sanctions against Russian arms manufactures ever lift though, then the United States and Switzerland could see these and civilian variants shortly after along with some other goodies. Unfortunately for our snow covered friends in Tim Hortons land, these would more than likely be on the prohibited list of firearms and not be able to be owned without license.