This was done for NationStates and for my own amusement and reasons. Though this is a fictional rifle (especially the history behind it) how it works and how an AK-47 could be made even better is definitely real. All of the text and images associated with it are copyright myself. Any questions or comments should certainly feel free however.

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Northern Expanse Avtomat Kalashnikova - Raven Assault Rifle - NEAK RAR-4
- Raven Munitions Industries -

Cartridge: 7.62x39mm, 5.45x39mm, 9x42mm MSA, 7.25x42mm IZIMIL
Operation: Long stroke gas piston, rotating bolt with 3 locking lugs.
Overall length: 1030 mm (40.5 in)
Barrel length: 420 mm (16.5 in) Rifle , 305 mm (12 in) Carbine
Weight, with empty magazine: 3.6 kg (7.9 lb) with empty magazine.
Magazine: 20, 30, 40 round box. 75 round drum
Cyclic ROF: 600, 650, 720 with adjustment of gas valve.
Modes of Fire: 1, 30
Maximum effective range: ~500 meters (~550 yards)

Brief History:

The NEAK RAR-4 ( Northern Expanse Avtomat Kalashnikova - Raven Assault Rifle 4) started life nine short years after the Long Patriotic War in the, then, young research division of Raven Automatic Arms (now RMI), a small arms company started by Idris Malik and Grigori Fyodorov. Having failed to gain acceptance of their novel semi-automatic rifle design in trials against the Belgian RRL 34 directly after the war, and only having kept afloat through sporting sales of the design, the company looked toward the future and acquired several samples of the newest firearms on the world market along with prototypes from the foregone Long War. Studying these beside reports of the trends of combat encountered by all sides in the main theaters of the war, RAA came to the conclusion that very few (including the defeated) had arrived at: The long rifle had its day and was now mostly overkill on the modern battlefield of the time. It had become inefficient and obsolete as the main longarm of the highly mobile armies of the world.

What was required was a new type of smallarm, one capable of being carried easily and compactly, capable of a large volume of fire under control, and containing in its magazine a high ammunition count while still remaining light. Thankfully, while this concept was still very new and the antithesis to most military thinking at the time, it was not untried. Amongst the samples they had gathered, was the Avtomat Kalashnikova of 46. Though not an easy task to get these few samples, they stood out as the most reliable and rough handling, traits highly prized by Expansites with their large nation's diverse terrain. The accuracy was slightly less than what was to be desired but with a tighter, slightly longer barrel, and better manufacturing, it could be improved measurably. A process of improvement, modification, and adaptation of the design to a form that RAA thought would be desirable by the Expanse military began and continued for two years. Certain features and ideas were adopted from the other designs, RAA's own work, and even their rival's RLL 34 currently in service with the military.

In the end, what resulted was a much improved and even more modern example of smallarms design than the original rifle with an outlook toward the future, uprating, easy field repair, and adaptation to a given situation. It was true that the antecedent rifle was a good all-around fighter, however, Malik and Fyodorov wanted to make their design be a very good implement in most situations. One situation they did not plan for it to excel at was as a long-range sniper weapon. The accuracy had been improved a good deal but both lead designers felt that the roll of a marksman's weapon would be much better fulfilled by existing long rifles utilizing a rifle cartridge and scope.

Even with such a remarkable weapon, the acceptance and adoption of the RAR-4 was a precarious and peculiar path toward military use: At the time that the design was entering its final phase of development, the Expanse was engaged in the attempted suppression of rebel forces in the southern region of Larp, an area co-administrated by the Expanse and Kzagblech both of which had a good number of settlers there. The Kzags being better at civil administration and development, the Expanse was being relied on for most of the military force used against the rebels. The rebels consisted of what was left of the Larpian clans who were so diminished in numbers from almost non-stop infighting that the League of Aligned Northern Nations had classified the area as Type 4 for "Nearly Uninhabited" and authorized it for resettling in the first place. The Larpians saw the colonization as aggression by larger nations against what they considered their territory. They instituted a program, if you could call something so disorganized such, of "moral ethnic cleansing" against the settlers of both nations. To further the preposterous nature of their actions, the fact that the settlers from the Expanse were of no one ethnic makeup seemed to have been avoided in their "program" completely and everyone not of a local clan who entered the region was targeted for violence.

Unfortunately for the Expansite army, they were armed with long rifles in terrain that was both craggy, mountainous, and heavily forested in places making it ideal for ambush and their armored vehicles were of little use if they wished to accomplish anything of merit. Hindering their efforts further was the locals' detailed knowledge of the terrain, their ability to live almost anywhere in the gorges and valleys studded with caves and rilles, and their mysterious acquisition of surplus arms from the defeated Altern through, at the time, unknown channels. These arms included machineguns, rocket launchers, and perhaps most devastating of all, prototype assault rifles. What resulted was a guerrilla force equipped with modern weapons that refused to be pinned down and in the case of longarms, outgunned the Expanse soldiers. With their assault rifles, the Larpers were able to emerge from ambush, laying down a withering outpouring of fire before disappearing again.

Needless to say, this course of events was doing little for morale and even less to further the campaign against the rebels. Although the official news didn't mention that progress wasn't being made in part due to the rebel's firearms, Fyodorov and Malik were able to read between the lines and saw this as their chance to push the RNE's military forward into the next generation. RAA began submitting requests for trials at every level of government, from the local Watch to the highest level including the military itself. Taking their rifle to those which acknowledged their requests for an interview, if not a trial, they displayed its abilities and worked their way upward. Eventually they reached military trials and ran into a wall of denial and refusal to believe that anything but a full rifles would be adequate for the military, going so far as to write it off as nothing more than an over-complicated submachinegun.

Thankfully, at the time, a new Imperator had come into office who was looking for a solution to the Larpian problem without sending the entire military into the region. What he saw, in succession, was the request for an interview from Fyodorov and Malik, the glowing recommendations of several local branches of government and military, and finally the army's utter rejection of it by calling it a "toy". Interest piqued by this sequence of events, he granted the two designers an interview where they described their rifle and why it should be adopted by the armed forces. After a thorough exposition of the two existing models at the time, the rifle and LMG variants, the Imperator was suitably impressed to order the aghast military to arm a Republic Expeditionary Force (REF) with the new rifle and send them into the region for field trials. As they say, the rest is history. The new rifle performed admirably well in Larp, which has become a Free Economic Zone still under co-Expanse-Kzag administration, and went on to be adopted by all of the armed forces along with the Izistani military some short years later in their local 7.25x42mm chambering. A huge number have been exported to other nations in all its forms and repeatedly acclaimed as accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Technical Description:

The RAR-4 is a long stroke gas-operated rifle with a rotating bolt locking the chamber with three lugs. The gas system is located above the barrel and consists of cylinder and piston. On top of the cylinder is attached a Picatinny rail running its full length. Various attachments (such as laser designators, flashlights) may be mounted here to the side using special horizontal brackets that don't block the line of sight. The gas tube has no furniture of its own but is protected from the sides by the lower foreguard. There is a four position gas valve, three settings and one cutoff position. The receiver is comprised of two sections: A machined center section which is attached directly to the forward trunnion and barrel while providing two rails going to the rear for the bolt to ride on. The dust cover attaches on top of this as well. On either side of the upper receiver are two lugs for attaching a mounting bracket for telescopic sights. Secondly, a lower magazine and trigger unit housing that is hinged to the upper receiver at the front and can be swung down and removed for cleaning or replacement with the removal of the stock. The magazine catch is of the normal lever type and is quite strong. Just above the magazine catch is the bolt stop release button located on the left side of the lower receiver. Rearward of this is the fire mode selector: Safe, semi-automatic fire, and full automatic fire. The bolt handle is located on the left side of the receiver and the ejection port is on the right side, a casing deflector is mounted just behind it as part of the dust cover.

The barrel is mounted with a long slit-type muzzlebrake-flash hider that also acts as a bayonet mount. All of the current furniture is a polymer composite material making it very durable and resistant to temperature and weather changes. The front sight is a blade type adjustable for windage and elevation adjustment while the rear is a sliding diopter adjustable to 800 meters. The lower foreguard can be removed and replaced with a special one for mounting several types of shotgun and grenade launching systems. There are several variations to the standard rifle design:

RAR-4C - This is simply a shortened version of the standard rifle with a 30.5 cm barrel and slant type muzzle brake on it. This version can be equipped with the folding polymer stock.

RAR-4C9 - This version is the carbine with a 9mm barrel chambered for the CQB 9x42mm cartridge. All other aspects of the rifle are the same including the bolt face and magazines used.

RAR-4LMG - The lower receiver is replaced with a special one containing a belt feed system and deleting the bolt hold open device. The bolt is also replaced and fires from the open position while automatic is selected and closed position while in semi-automatic mode. The bottom of the belt feedway may be opened by depressing the button forward of the trigger guard so that jams can be cleared or to be cleaned. No other changes to the rifle are necessary. Disintegrating or non-disintegrating belts with starter tabs are used along with hard polymer boxes. An optional bipod can be easily and quickly attached at the front sling point. The folding polymer stock can not be used on this model.