By IDI

Russia’s famed small arms manufacturer Kalashnikov Concern, on Thursday, published a video on twitter of firing of AKV-521 semi-automatic carbine kept at -50 degree Celsius.

During the test, the carbine successfully fired a full magazine of frozen rounds.  The carbine is being tested for performance parameters for Russian winter and arctic conditions. During test, the body of the gun did not show any adverse impact from frozen firing condition.

Based on original AK system, this under trial carbine comes with many modern features.

The carbine is intended to provide shooters with modular, multi-caliber weapon platform which build on purpose of mounting modern heavy Low Power Veriable Optics and night vision / infra-red illumination combo.

To achieve this goal, the Kalashnikov AKV-521 carbine is designed with basic layout similar to weapons such as SIG SG 553. This means that the AKV-521 now features separate upper receiver with solid 1913-MIL-STD top, and a lower receiver which houses trigger and magazine.

Due to modular nature of the gun, it is planned to be offered with optional additional upper receivers with barrels, allowing for quick caliber of configuration change. As of February 2021 the Kalashnikov AKV-521 carbine is under heavy test program since it's scheduled to enter initial serial production by mid-2021.

Rifle will be offered in several most popular intermediate calibers, such as 5.45x39mm, 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm, and with two barrel lengths, standard 415 mm and short 341 mm.