Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today in Slovenia by generous invitation of Polenar Tactical,
and we're taking a look at a couple of really interesting small arms.
Today we have a Kalashnikov SR1.
This is the civilian competition semi-automatic version of the Russian AK-107 and AK-108 family,
originally developed for military trials.
And what makes this particularly interesting is that it uses
the counterbalanced recoil ... compensation system. So we'll get to that in a moment.
A little bit of a background on this: since the 1960s and 1970s
Russia (or the Soviet Union at that point),
had a series of developmental trials very much like the American SPIW program.
They were attempts to improve hit probability with the infantry rifle.
Frankly it wasn't just the US and the USSR, kind of everyone was interested in this.
And a whole bunch of interesting different ideas came out,
and one of them was the idea of counterbalanced recoil.
Now, the first big misconception that I want to clear up on this is that
in a rifle like this, the counterbalance system is not about
compensating for the recoil of the bullet coming out of the barrel.
The rifle is a closed system, as far as physics goes
you can't compensate for the bullet coming out unless there's something else
coming out the back of the rifle and leaving the system.
Instead what this is designed to do
is negate the impact of the bolt hitting the trunnion when it chambers a round,
and the bolt hitting the back of the receiver when it gets to the end of travel.
Those are the actions, especially in a small calibre like 5.56 or 5.45,
those are the events that actually cause the gun to jump off target.
That's what creates most of the felt recoil of shooting.
So the SR1 here is in 5.56,
in military trials this was developed in 5.45 primarily.
But when it was not adopted by the Russian military (at least not in any substantial numbers),
Kalashnikov Concern decided to make their own commercial version
to sell for the sports shooting market, primarily in Europe.
I'm sure they'd love to sell them in the US as well, but there's been a prohibition
on Russian rifle imports into the US for quite some time.
So we don't see these at all in the United States.
So let's take a look inside, this thing's got gears and ratchets and all sorts of cool stuff in it.
Fundamentally the SR1 is two different things in one package.
One of them is the balanced recoil mechanical system.
The other is an adaptation of the AK to use as much AR-15 setup essentially as possible.
So this is a rifle that was designed for the civilian competition world.
As a result ... it's chambered for 5.56, it uses AR-15 magazines.
This one is a 10 round limited mag that came with the gun
because of Russian magazine regulations.
But standard mags.
An AR-15 safety isn't really feasible, but instead there is a cross-bolt safety here.
That's fire, that's safe,
which is ... substantially easier to use than the original system.
We have an ambidextrous magazine release here,
and right here.
And you can see that it's set up for AR-15 magazines.
The lever down here is a bolt lock and release.
So I can open the bolt up, push that lever up, lock the bolt open,
lever down, bolt closes. So very much AR-15 style controls.
The rear trunnion has been designed (instead of using AK stocks) to fit an AR-15 buffer tube,
so that then any AR-15 standard stock will fit just fine.
The stocks that the SR1 comes with are made by FAB Defense,
as are the magazines, I should have said.
The pistol grip is actually an AK-12 pistol grip.
So if you push these two buttons in you can pull out ... the cleaning kit.
Inside there's an oil bottle in the middle, and then all your standard
AK cleaning tools, pin punch, brush, etc.
Just two spring loaded little tabs there hold it in place.
The top cover is fitted with Picatinny rail to use optics.
There is a 1.5/6x power Russian prismatic scope on this right now.
But anything can go on there as you would need to do
to market this to the IPSC rifle market.
And then out on the handguard we have a bit of Picatinny rail
for a front sight if you want to use irons.
The rifle also comes with a competition style muzzle brake, three ports on the side and the top.
And I suspect when we get this on the range one of the things we'll find
is that with 5.56 a significant amount of the recoil control
is actually going to be coming from that brake rather than the counterbalance system.
The charging handle is not ambidextrous,
it's set up on the left side to fit right handed shooters with an open slot here.
This is the sort of thing that you would be leery of on a military rifle,
because it's going to let a lot of dirt potentially into the gun.
Not a big deal on a sporting rifle.
However, just because the charging handle is over here
doesn't mean that left handers are out of luck.
You can actually put a charging handle on the right side as well,
I just don't have it on this particular rifle.
A quick look at the markings. We have a CIP ... proof mark here.
Kalashnikov Concern, and "Made in Russia".
On the opposite side we have much the same thing,
again Kalashnikov, SR1, .223 Remington.
This is "Made in Russia" in Russian, proof mark.
And these are made at the Izhmash factory.
And typical of AKs, there is a serial number on the front trunnion.
Instead of being riveted in place like an AK trigger guard,
we have a plastic assembly here (the whole thing's plastic)
that contains the magazine well and the controls.
And it is screwed into the bottom of the receiver.
There's a second screw underneath the pistol grip.
Alright, now the bits you actually want to see.
Disassembly: we have a lever in the back,
going to pull that, rotate that to about this position,
and we can take the dust cover off.
Pretty typical stuff there, nothing that interesting.
Second step then is to remove the handguard, just rotate that lever back ...
and I can pull the handguard off the rifle.
Now we get into the real meat and potatoes.
Starting with the gas block, which actually vents gas in two directions, both forward and backward.
And there are two gas pistons here.
This gas piston is connected to this lower bar,
which is connected to the bolt carrier and the bolt below.
This front one is connected to this top bar, which is ... synchronised I should say,
to the bottom bar by a pair of cog wheels up in the top.
And then they each have their own recoil springs in the back here.
So, this is basically going to fall apart
if I try to cycle it without the handguard and the top cover.
But if we look at this in bits here.
First at the front, when this cycles you can see both gas pistons are moving,
like that, one forward, one backward.
Then if we look here, this is where you've got the pair of
rolling cogs that lock the two together.
So when the bolt carrier goes back, this top rail is going to go forward.
Now we can further disassemble this by simply lifting the top rail off, like that.
I can then ... take the rear recoil spring out.
This is attached just like the main recoil spring in a regular AK.
Take that out ... and then pull it out of its base right there.
And then the bolt carrier comes back and lifts out (there we go), just like a regular AK.
Interestingly, the receiver is totally standard AK.
The rear trunnion here is slightly different.
You can see it's got sort of these locking loops in it which interface ...
with the disassembly lever and this cut locking [bar] in the top cover.
We've got a fire control system that is standard AK,
with the exception of the addition of this little part here for the safety.
And then the front trunnion started off as a standard AK-74 front trunnion
with a new bullet guide welded in to fit 5.56 and AR magazine height.
And then this locking block welded on to mount the counterbalance system.
And this ... basically spring seat welded on.
So this ... is a fairly simple system as far as the receiver goes,
it's an AK that is then modified at the factory.
Obviously the gas port is fundamentally different as well.
One last disassembly step, I can pull the recoil spring for the top bar out.
And then this piece comes to the very back and tips off.
And that is the part that's responsible for synchronising
the upper and lower pieces of the counterbalance system.
OK, so what is this actually doing?
Fundamentally what's happening is when the gun fires
both of these gas pistons are being pushed by gas from the cartridge.
And their movement is locked together by this central wheeled piece.
You can see that we have all of these holes in both bars.
Those holes sit in these cogs ...
just like this, and regulate the travel of the two components.
So when this fires, these two guys are going to go like that.
Now the question is what does this actually achieve?
And the answer is something that's significant mechanically,
but may not be that big of a deal for the actual shooter.
In a normal AK the two things that really contribute to felt recoil,
which is to say that contribute to the sights of the gun moving,
are not necessarily the bullet leaving the muzzle.
Instead they are the bolt carrier here slamming into the back of the receiver,
and then slamming into the chamber.
There's a lot of moving mass in the AK
and the gun tends to jerk back when the bolt hits the back of the receiver,
and jerk forward when it chambers a round into the front.
Perhaps a little bit less when it goes forward
because some of that energy is taken up by pushing a cartridge into the chamber.
But that is what the counterbalance system is preventing.
So where the bolt carrier would normally push the gun forward when it slams home,
at the exact same time this piece is slamming backwards.
And those two forces balance each other out so that,
at least in theory, the shooter doesn't see any movement of the gun.
The same thing happens when the gun opens.
When the bolt carrier hits the back of the receiver, it's being limited out by this.
You've also got movement going forward that's stopping.
And those two forces balance each other out
so that the shooter doesn't notice any movement of the gun.
In theory you could do this without a component like this,
you could simply have two gas pistons that are
both simultaneously being pushed in opposite directions.
But then you would have to exactly balance the mass and the friction in both components
to ensure that they both cycled in exact synchronicity.
Otherwise you'd actually create more problems by having one hit and then the other hit, out of sync.
What this set of two little gear wheels does
is it forces these two parts to operate in sync
regardless of if one's got dirty and is dragging more, if one weighs more than the other.
No matter what's happening, they have to stay together because these wheels
are locked into the little holes in the top and bottom here.
So that's how the system works.
Now let's go down to the range and see what the practical application is.
Alright, so I want to see how this actually handles.
But I'm interested in what the recoil system actually does, not the big compensator on it.
So we've taken the compensator off to begin with.
Let's go ahead and try it out.
Alright, so that is definitely not recoilless.
I ... was clearly getting muzzle climb.
Not a lot of muzzle climb, but definitely getting some.
And that ... fits with what I've been told by some experts on this rifle,
which is really the thing that's doing most of the work is that compensator.
It was also interesting that there was so much flash coming out of this,
and this is just standard 5.56, that I could see it through the scope.
Which is kind of an unusual experience for me.
It's definitely light recoiling, it's controllable, but it's not zero recoil.
But maybe it will be with the compensator.
Let's go ahead and put that back on and try it again.
OK, that was much closer to zero actual recoil.
And I can certainly see someone who has significant like race gun competition,
IPSC rifle experience, having no problem at all holding that just perfectly solid on target.
But that's where the crux of the problem comes in.
It's not the balanced recoil system
that's really doing the lion's share of the work there, it's this muzzle brake.
If you take this has got to be an ... 8 or 9 pound rifle in 5.56
and put that kind of muzzle brake on it,
you're not going to have a ton of felt recoil regardless.
And ... the rifle is designed to minimise that felt recoil, and does a really good job of it.
The question becomes is it worth it for the added complexity,
the reliability factor, the extra lubrication, the complexity of assembly.
I can totally see why this was a complete failure as a military rifle.
The reassembly process and the disassembly process for the recoil system
is not something you would want to do at night in the mud, let me put it that way.
In addition, this didn't go ... over very well with Kalashnikov Concern, who manufactured it.
It went into production in 2018, they only made one or two batches of rifles.
A small number of them, like this one, filtered into Europe.
But there was very little consumer interest in the rifle,
probably because of the complexity, the cost,
and the fact that Kalashnikov Concern had substantial QC problems with this rifle.
... Basically it was a complete commercial flop for them,
as it had been a complete military flop as the AK-107 or AK-108.
... This is an interesting situation of, yes, you get the benefit, this rifle does what it claims,
and shoots extremely flat, but at what cost?
You can take ... an AR that weighs pounds less,
and do sort of the same style of competition-type modifications,
a lightweight bolt carrier, a tuned gas system, a really good muzzle brake.
And you can get the exact same result in a rifle with a lot less complexity, and less weight.
And something that's not unobtainium, made with quality control problems.
So, it's a really cool idea. I'd love to have one myself as an engineering nerd.
But would I actually go out and spend the money to have one of these as a serious competition rifle? No.
And if I was running a military would I adopt this system?
Absolutely not, it is totally not worth it for that.
I've been really excited to get my hands on one of these for quite a while.
I'd like to give a really big thanks to Matevž for loaning this rifle to me,
and for Rojal for access to the range so I could actually try out shooting it.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video, this was a really interesting one to me.
Thanks for watching.