In this video, I give a quick rundown of some of the newer small arms presented by Kalashnikov group at ARMY-2018 expo: AK-200 series, AK-308, AM-17 and AMB-17.

For the last three years, “Army” remains to be the biggest and most popular military/small arms exhibition in Russia. With that, you would expect every exhibition to bring a lot of news about new small arms, weapon accessories and other interesting developments.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Russian firearms industry is quite weird – with barely existing civilian market all real research and development is concentrated in the defense sector. Consequently, all the new weapon designs which development was financed by Ministry of Defense or LE agencies are inevitably classified.

That is why you seldom see anything really new at those exhibitions. This year was not an exception – there was nothing new, and AK-308 stole the spotlight. The face you make when you’ve been talking about the same weapon for 5 days straight. Photo source: https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/329049-top-3-new-assault-rifles-from-kalashnikov

Other weapons can hardly be considered “new”. AK-200 series is demonstrated under its name for the first time, but last year the same weapons were showcased as “modernised 100 series”. You can read about it in this post by Eric B: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/10/27/closer-look-kalashnikov-ak-100m-series-tfb-unique-pictures/

And even before that, you could see them at IDEX 2017 in Abu-Dhabi. The only difference was the name – in UAE those rifles were presented as “civilian carbines”. Photo source: https://strategie-technik.blogspot.com/2017/03/zu-gast-in-little-sparta-idex-2017-in.html

AM-17 and AMB-17 were also presented at the same exhibition in 2017. If you want to know more about the history of those to weapons, you can check out this article.

But after all, there was something interesting for small arms enthusiasts at the exhibition – “The Syrian war trophies display”. Boxes of FN FALs, Sterling SMGs, UZIs, and M16s

Photo source https://podpolkovnikvvs.livejournal.com/400025.html

French MAS-49 rifles and some bolt-actions. Photo source https://podpolkovnikvvs.livejournal.com/400025.html

And something even more unexpected – a crate of German STG-44s in mint condition. Photo source https://podpolkovnikvvs.livejournal.com/400025.html

Looking at that display I couldn’t stop thinking that in my ideal world there would be shelters for guns like that so every well-meaning gun owner could go to that shelter and “rescue” a few guns to give them a new loving home.