>>63914619AK-12 is mostly a direct upgrade from AK74M because they put a top rail and adjustable stock with cheek rest on an AK and managed to not make it heavier, the biggest problem were the QC issues, white room design flaws and the military that failed to understand why it needed this rifle.
>Replace dovetail with a rail for universal optics compatibility>Gun doesn't come with any optics until revision 3, most units only have dovetail night vision sights, Valday is issued only to select few.>Mobiks buy out any and all hunting IR sights they find.>Add 2-round burst and spend billion years in an attempt to make it work>Military command that requested it forgot why they wanted it.>They never managed to make it work anyway.>QD suppressor capable muzzle device>QD suppressor isn't issued with the rifle>Commercial options available immediately>Rev3 muzzle device is now unremovable and can be shot off the gun due to QC issues>Top rail on gas block cover.>Doesn't actually hold zero because it's still just a gas block cover.>Russians didn't adopt an IR Laser/illum block anyway, and even if they did, they wouldn't issue it with every gun.>But everyone wants to put a commercial block on the gun (IR laser in peer to peer warfare with IR camera drones in the sky), so maybe by Revision 4 it will hold zero.Mind you, all of these capabilities are missing from AK74 derivatives, meaning AK12 is an OK modern rifle, but AK74 is a good outdated rifle. Main problem being, all the other parts that would capitalize on it being a modern rifle are missing.
It's also interesting to watch it getting yearly revisions, they obviously keep trying to perfect it by adjusting it to combat experiences, but it still raises question of multiple revisions with perhaps incompatible parts being out in the wild.