Despite every internet expert telling you, “Rifle is fine!” The reality of the AK is a different story. Yes, these guns are incredibly reliable, robust, and have proven themselves in conflicts around the globe for nearly eight decades. But even with this unparalleled pedigree, Mikhail Kalashnikov’s magnum opus could use a little help to keep up with modern weapons.
Both the civilian and Russian military markets support this, too. It’s the reason Russian Spetsnaz don’t run bar-stock AKs; they have tricked-out special models. It’s also why the aftermarket for AKs has exploded in the last two decades. In fact, the market has expanded so much that there’s a nearly inexhaustible number of options for a shooter looking to customize their favorite Kalashnikov. With that in mind, we’ve narrowed down the top five must-have AK upgrades.
What is an Upgrade?
What is an Upgrade? What an AK upgrade is seems like a simple question, but it actually deserves a little attention before delving into the article itself. That’s because it’s important to establish metrics for what we can state is an objective improvement to the weapon system. So, for this article, the following upgrades must improve one of the following aspects of the gun’s performance.
- Accuracy – Whether we’re talking about mechanical or practical accuracy, the upgrade must make the weapon more capable of hitting smaller targets at further distances than the factory iron sights.
- Reliability – An upgrade should increase the weapon’s ability to run continuously without cleaning.
- Ergonomics – This one is more subjective, but the upgrade should address the firearm’s usability or simplify its manual of arms.
- Terminal Ballistics – How the projectile affects its target. A good example would be expanding ammunition versus FMJ or ball ammo.
- Versatility – An upgrade that makes the gun more useful in more situations. For instance, a flashlight makes a host gun infinitely better at engaging targets in low or no light.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the top five upgrades for your AK carbine.
Vickers AK Sling
For most shooters, the importance of a sling is often totally overlooked. This is a shame because a long gun becomes vastly less useful when you have to carry it all the time. A sling allows shooters to carry their AK while keeping both hands free for other tasks. In a tactical environment, this might mean switching to a sidearm or opening a door, but for hiking or hunting, it means being able to climb a deer stand or navigate the woods more easily.
But a sling is a sling, right? What makes the Vickers Standard AK Sling so different? For starters, the Vickers AK Sling was designed from its inception on the AK platform. Those of you who don’t own an AK are designed to use a military-issue cotton sling with a brass hook that snaps on one end of the rifle and loops through the other.
This sounds simple and straightforward, but it’s actually a pain in the butt to install. Furthermore, factory AK slings are very small. It is too small for shooters, who usually wear a medium-sized shirt to sling the rifle across their chest with enough extra space to maneuver. Additionally, it’s very difficult to quickly adjust.
The Vickers AK Sling addresses all of these concerns. It utilizes a simple polymer-coated steel cable loop to attach to the rifle’s sling mounts and has plenty of additional length to allow shooters of virtually all sizes to use it comfortably. However, the best aspect of this sling, in my opinion, is the quick-adjust tab. A shooter simply pulls on this tab and can adjust the sling’s length with one hand. This is ideal when you want to quickly swap between a sling, which is loose and keeps a gun handy, or tight and close
RS Regulate Optics Mount
For years, mounting an optic on an AK rifle was a compromise. Shooters either ran iron sights and had a great cheek weld or utilized an optics mount that set their sights so high that they had to adopt a “chin weld” that made shooting quickly very difficult.
This is because, until the late 2000s, every optic mount for the AK set the optic at least a full inch above the factory iron sights. Shooters could install a new stock with an adjustable comb, but this still wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t until RS Regulate released their modular optic mounts that shooters could properly configure their rifles with an optic.
What makes the RS Regulate Optics Mounts so great is their modular design and their perfect alignment with the rifle’s bore. Because the RS regulate mounts don’t just lower the optic closer to the bore, they also allow the shooter to align the optic left or right perpendicular to the bore. AR-15 shooters take this for granted because the receiver has an integrated optics rail, but AK rifles use a side rail that requires a dog-leg mount that forms an “L” that reaches over the left side of the receiver and then above the dust cover. Most old mounts didn’t perfectly align the shooter’s optic with the bore, which meant that once zeroed at a certain distance, the point of impact would shift not just vertically but also horizontally at other distances.
RS Regulate also makes dozens of upper mounts for their rails that allow the lowest possible mounting solution. For instance, they make one called the AKOG, which negates the need for a Picatinny adapter when using a Trijicon ACOG or some Primary Arms prismatic optics.
Spikes Tactical DynaComp
Although movies and television often exaggerate the recoil of an AK, AKs can still have a decent amount of kick. While the AKM’s slant brake and the AK-100 series compensator do a good job of taming some of that recoil, they could certainly do better. Thankfully, Spikes Tactical has an incredibly effective solution – the Dynacomp.
The Dynacomp is a fairly simple solution to AK recoil: add as many compensating ports as humanly possible on a muzzle device. By doing so, the host expanding gases leaving the muzzle are redirected to counter the recoil impulse, making the gun very pleasant to shoot—unless you’re indoors.
That’s because, like all compensators, the Dynacomp makes your favorite AK very loud. The difference isn’t too bad on a full-sized AK in common calibers. But if you install one on a short AK pistol, you better double up on hearing protection because it’ll sound and feel like a bomb is going off at your muzzle. That said, all that sound and fury pays off by cutting the felt recoil of your AK by more than half! If you want the softest shooting AK possible and don’t care about bystanders’ or RSO’s hearing, the Spikes Tactical Dynacomp is the perfect solution.
PSA AK-100 Magazine
Although AKM purists might scoff at the prospect of polymer magazines in an AK, both Bulgarian surplus and Palmetto’s new-production polymer magazines have proven themselves every bit as reliable as their steel brethren. Featuring a polymer body with steel reinforcements, these new PSA magazines look like the current production of Russian AK-103 magazines without the $200-a-piece price tag.
Currently available in 30-round capacity, these magazines are much lighter than steel magazines and are nearly impervious to corrosion, unlike steel magazines. Plus, they look fantastic in your modern AK and run extremely well.
If you’re looking for a go-to magazine for prepping, home defense, or competition shooting, the PSA AK-103 magazines are a fantastic, economical choice.
Hornady BLACK 7.62x39mm SST Ammo
Historically, one of the biggest downsides of running an AK for self-defense or hunting is a lack of appropriate ammunition. Sure, Russian ammo manufacturers offered soft-point ammo, but even those tended to “ice-pick” through a target and not properly expand. The engineers at Hornady saw this and came up with a perfect solution.
They adapted their renowned SST or Super Shock Tip ammo is a hollow-point, boat-tailed round with a polymer tip filling the cavity to aid in feeding reliability. These round offer vastly superior terminal ballistics to FMJ ammo while also proving to be extremely accurate.
In fact, in my personal experience, the rounds tend to shrink group sizes on nearly every AK I test by roughly 25-30%. As far as terminal ballistics go, I’ve personally harvested whitetail bucks with the round at 75 yards, where a vital shot put the animal down instantly. When I retrieved the animal to process it, I found that the round retained nearly all of its original weight while expanding around 60% more than the original round’s diameter.
