Kalashnikov Conversion Kit

[New Dornalia]

Base Valmet M78, one of many Kalashnikov derivatives. Copies of this gun, along with others, were used for the project.

GHMARS, known as Operation Mars or the Ravenstenskia War, was a large-scale effort by the Dornalian External Research and Intelligence Section to supply, train, and arm two rival Ukrainian factions on one of the many Earths that populate the world of Nationstates (besides the one the Dornies have) seeking to combat the forces of a decaying Soviet Union that never fell--and that employed Magic to enforce the Will of the People.

Part of the difficulties in supplying the two movements--the Kherson Liberal Republic and the Duchy of Crimea--lay in the inherently Modern Tech level of the individuals involved in this distant Not-Earth. The pretense of maintaining plausible deniability, the desire to avoid escalating things too quickly, plus the need to scavenge from fallen Soviet forces meant using the weapons available to the two movements. Aside from the use of magic as well as other high tech weapons from other foreign donors, however, this meant the parties used weapons familiar to RL individuals as belonging to the Communist Bloc--Kalashnikovs, T-series tanks, and so on. That restricted the flexibility and range of responses available to the Dornalians, as this meant they couldn't simply just drop more Cadian Pattern Lasguns.

So, the Dornalians went back to the drawing board. An enterprising designer at New Yorktown, using various Kalashnikov-derived weapons systems, hit upon a means to provide both the SPORK Teams and the rebels with hard hitting firepower they could repair, reload, and use at will.

[New Dornalia]

Operation Method

The Mars Special RPK Conversion Kit is designed to work for a standard RPK Squad Automatic Weapon. It comes in four different types--one for 7.62mm Soviet RPKs/Zastava M72s and other such weapons, 5.45mm Soviet RPK-74s and associated types, 5.56 NATO for those armies using 5.56mm AK derivatives such as the 5.56mm Galil ARM, and 7.62 NATO for oddballs like the Valmet M78.

How it works is simple. The receiver and Kalashnikov mechanism itself is untouched. This means it feeds, reloads, and cycles like a normal Kalashnikov. No fancy explody bullets, no technobabbilicious whizbangery, just angry copper-jacketed lead in steel or brass cases with cordite being chambered and fed and struck with a firing pin through Mikhail Kalashnikov and colleagues' brutally efficient means of reminding people to be polite to his fellow Russians.

However, the front part--namely, the barrel, part of the gas block, the handguard, and the dust cover--are replaced with a new assembly resembling that fancy Red Jacket Suppressed AK's silencer assembly, but bigger, more "cyberpunkish," and less pretentious.

The barrel assembly itself houses a new barrel with an electromagnetic coil in it, along with the traditional rifling and an Ionization Mechanism. Essentially, the mechanism is activated when the safety selector is set to fire in any mode. Then, when fired, the bullet flies through the barrel, whereupon the coils accelerate the bullet to high speeds and the IM ionizes the gases within that haven't been already used up in cycling the action. The electromagnetic forces within the barrel focus the resulting efflua, making an angry bolt of plasma. This naturally happens in rapid succession, so there are many angry bolts of plasma coming out which can be used against enemy infantry or light vehicles.

Power to the assembly is provided by a long-life microfusion battery stored in the handguard that, at normal rates of sustained fire, needs only to be changed every twenty years.

Additionally, the Assembly has rails on it, which can be used to mount optics and so on, and installs a new rear sight at the back of the dust cover for better accuracy, although as the receiver is unmodified, the option to use ComBloc Side Rail Mounts is unaffected for those using such models. For those without ComBloc Side Mounts (e.g. using the Valmet M78), we provide "Dog Leg Rail Covers" which have rails mounted on the top. Obviously, there's a bipod available by default to aid the user in firing the thing. We also left the carrying handle alone.

Note that one feature which plagued the RPK and others of its ilk have been addressed--namely, the lack of a quick change barrel feature for when field maintenance becomes a need. The Conversion Kit installs a method by which the barrel itself can be quickly removed by moving a lever to the side, enabling the barrel assembly to be removed by grabbing it and pulling, enabling the user to simply shove in another barrel assembly and then moving the lever back in the other direction to bring the weapon back into working order.