There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. The Russians made the Vityaz, the Hungarians made the KGPF-9…and the Czechs actually made a version form the CZ-2000. This was the attempt to make a 5.56mm AK family of rifles form the roots of the 5.45mm Lada project developed in the last years of communist Czechoslovakia.
It is unclear who exactly this pattern was made for, as it wasn’t a part of the formal CZ-2000 system. It is also not a very good adaptation, with a very short bolt travel, which leads to a very high rate of fire and makes it difficult to control by 9mm standards. Still, it is a fascinating one-of-a-kind prototype to get a look at!
Many thanks to the fine filks at CZ for giving me a chance to take this out of their archives to show you – and then to actually try it out! Check out all their social media here:
https://www.instagram.com/czguns/
https://www.facebook.com/CZfirearms
For some reason I am not able to watch anything posted on Utreon. This is on my phone- Android. Please also post on Youtube.
Utreon does not work on my phone. Please also post on Youtube.
When I searched CZ2000 on YouTube, it’s the second result (after Ian’s review of the intermediate-caliber version).
Yes William, problem here down in New Zealand, too. Utreon needs more serves around the World to allow us to view these videos with out lag or it is just not downloading. Youtube, has cornered the market. Maybe after time Utreon will have more capital to invest in a International market. We hope.
Strangelly enough, Utreon works just fine in Russia. Both on Android phones and Windows x64 PC.
Probably won’t happen; as I understand it, users of Utreon want to migrate their services there, away from Youtube. May have something to do with the version of your phone as well.
“(…)Russians made the Vityaz(…)”
And before that M.T.Kalashnikov make AK-like design for 7,62×25 and then 9×18 cartridge, see photos of former http://zonwar.ru/pp/Kalashnikov_mod1947.html
“(…)several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber(…)”
Due to stock shape I find it vaguely resembling Vytis
https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Vytis_submachine_gun
One can certainly see the similarities to todays CZ EVO3 sub-machine gun in the top-rail with integrated iron sights and the slanted front.
The clear plastic magazines scream around 2000 as many designs used similar feeding devices especially with the lugs on the sides to lock several magazines together. See for examples the G36 and MP5 in .40/10 mm, SG550, FAMAE SMG from the same timeframe and a few others. These magazines with lugs used to be very fashionable at the time. But from my experience using the G36 the lugs like to hang up on clothes, magazine pouches, brush… And to be safe that they do not come loose when locking magazines together you better wrap adhesive tape around them or use a rubber band. So yeah, I think these lugs end up on the “it was a nice idea” pile. And to utility of taping magazines togehter is questionable anyway IMHO. It makes the gun heavier, magazien changes and storage of empty magazines a bit awkward. So the ew cases where it might be useful a roll of adhesive tape can still be used. No need for putting lugs on each and every magazine.
Thing I forgot to mention is, that they made quite a lot of changes compared to the CZ2000 rifle design, making this IMHO a whole different firearm only sharing the trigger mechanism and a few other parts. Makes me wonder if it would have been worth it staying roughly in the AK/cz2000 shape or if they should have gone with a clean sheet design for better ergonomics for example.
There are so many of those “brilliant” ideas that they come up with, and which are rarely actually proven out in practice.
It’s a lot like the US Army practice of taping magazines together and flipping them, which was something they supposedly did a lot of in Vietnam. Thing is, just like the Frito Bandito-esque drapery of MG belts about the person, it’s a really bad idea that only the feckless take up because “it looks so kewl”. Every one of the actual Vietnam combat veterans I had training me in the early 1980s were emphatic on two points: One, you don’t ever do that to MG belts, and two, an upside-down magazine taped to the one in your weapon is the Devil’s playground.
Clipping the mags together the way the G36 and StG90 do, I’m highly dubious of the entire value proposition, there. What do you do with the stack of magazines, once you’ve expended them in a firefight? Throw them away? ‘Cos, they sure as hell ain’t fitting in a dump pouch clipped together like that…
The “Good Idea Fairy(tm)” needs to be smacked flat whenever she rears her ugly head around the drafting tables. Some ideas have merit; many don’t. You need to actually get out into the field and see how people live and fight with the tools you’re designing for them, and the whole field of impromptu magazine adaptations just reeks of people who never spent day one closely integrated with the mud and filth of daily field operations, or who never had to maneuver a three-magazine cluster through close combat operations.
I mean, it looks “Kewl”, but… Man, I’ve never, ever felt the need to do that. Whatever you need in terms of speed-up for a magazine change, you’ll do better by working on your time-and-motion for getting the mags out of your gear and into a dump pouch. Or, so my experience says; yours may vary.
I am glad CZ survived as one of a few the “shock transformation” of western liberal advisors from “state enterprise” to private enterprise. guys from Morava /easter part of czech republik/ are really friendly and hard working people. I like them. unfortunatelly most of companies did not survived the shock therapy and hundreds years old brands were destroyed.
Cynical me has to note that you blame the “shock therapy” for the destruction of all those companies legacy, but fail to mention the earlier state takeovers for any of it.
Lots of those companies were really zombie enterprises, kept alive only due to state intervention after said state destroyed the entire infrastructure around them for ideological reasons. The fact that they lasted long enough to be forced into shut-down when the forces of economic reality reared their ugly heads is not a good thing; many of those firms would have gone away naturally, or they’d have been forced to adapt much earlier, perhaps surviving because they did so.
Central European industry got a double-whammy of state intervention, first from the Nazis, then from the Communists. The sad fact is, those were the responsible parties for all of the destruction, not the people who shut down the companies which were no longer economically sensible.
And, yes, it probably could have been managed better, but you could say the same thing about the original nationalizations, as well. End of the day, however? The companies are only the outward expression of the skills and craftsmanship of the employees; when a company goes bankrupt and shuts down, those skills and cultural pieces are still there to be taken up by other companies and enterprises that are actually producing things of value. It sucks, watching a cherished firm go down due to mismanagement and inability to adapt to changed conditions, but it’s also an inevitable part of life–Change and growth, creative destruction.
Sir, you do not know what really happend here. the western “advisors” destroyed everything to eliminated competition companies and they wanted to create just a colony. these neolocolonial parazitical systems drains energy, money and sources from eastern europe. western “investors” bought everything deeply, deeply under real price. then just sold all machinery, buildings, fired people a leave looted teritory. other “investors” thanks to appointed western agents in east europeans goverments bought enterprises deeeply under power and now pay no taxes, export profits to the tax havens, exploit people and treat them like slaves. imagine you buy a factor in the price of 100 000 000 Kčs just of 1 000 000 Kčs, and your clear profit is 100 000 000 Kčs a year! why Mr. Havel has his statue in US congreas but no in Czech parliament! 😀 😀 😀 just come and as poeple in Morava. Westerners do nothing, just build colonies and enslave people.
“There have been several examples of the AK being used as the basis for a pistol-caliber SMG or PDW. […] the Hungarians made the KGPF-9”
As far as I know, it is false. Probably there are not common subassemblies or parts with the AK. Maybe the parts of the trigger system are exceptions. Maybe.