AK-107 Assault Rifle and AK-108 Assault Rifle

AK-107 Assault Rifle, AK-108 Assault Rifle and AL-7 Assault Rifle

Assault Rifle at first thought to be variants of the AK-100 series (above), the AK-107 assault rifle and AK-108 assault rifle are now understood to be completely different designs resulting from a different development process. The genesis of these rifles came in the early 1970s, when Yuriy Alexandrov developed an assault rifle partially based on the Kalashnikov action called the AL-7 assault rifle. The AL-7 assault rifle used an operating system that, while based on gas operation, used what Alexandrov called a “balanced gas” system. The balanced gas system uses the gas from the firing of a round to a pair of operating rounds both fairly heavy as operating rods go which move simultaneously in opposite directions, one partially counteracting the recoil caused by the other.

AK-107 Assault Rifle

 This acts to reduce actual recoil in addition to felt recoil and a modified version of the AK-74M’s muzzle brake further reduces felt recoil, even though the cyclic rate of the rifles are much higher than those of the AK-74M assault rifle. (The cyclic rate is still not high enough to affect the game statistics, however.) When the AL-7 assault rifle was first designed, however, it was ahead of its time – Soviet production methods were ill-suited for mass production of what is a complicated weapon in a reasonable period of time and at a reasonable cost.

AK-107 Assault Rifle

The AL-7 was shelved until the mid-1990s, when manufacturing methods had improved considerably and Alexandrov had worked his way up to a senior engineer at Izhmash. Collaboration was undertaken with Kalashnikov, and the AK-107 assault rifle was introduced in about 1998. It differed little from the AL-7 – the AL-7 used a machined, fluted receiver, while the AK-107 assault rifle uses a plain stamped steel receiver, and a three-round burst setting was added to the fire controls. The AK-107 was intended to be a competitor to the AN-94 Abakan (and still is – in real-life terms, it is much cheaper to produce than the AN-94), but like the AN-94, its future and that of the AK-108 remain uncertain due to the poor economic
climate in Russia.

AL-7 assault rifle

AK-108 Assault Rifle

The AK-107 and AK-108 do have a marked resemblance to the AK-100 series; however, this is probably due to their both using the basic Kalashnikov design as a basis. The AK-107 and AK-108 use mostly polymer furniture, but most of the metalwork is of stamped steel. The ejection port is larger than that of a typical Kalashnikov-based weapon, with a stronger extractor. The receiver’s cover is hinged at the front instead of lifting completely off when being field stripped. The rear sight is mounted directly on the receiver cover, rather than on the receiver itself. The typical Russian-style brackets for the mounting of optical devices can be mounted, but these brackets can also accept rails which allow the use of many Western-type optics. The magazines are, however, the same proprietary magazines used on the AK-100 series.