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The Puşcă Automată model 1986 (abbreviated PA md. 86 or simply md. 86) is the standard assault rifle used by the Romanian Army. The export name for this variant is the AIMS-74.
History[]
As the Soviet Union switched form the 7.62×39mm caliber AK-47 to the 5.45×39mm caliber AK-74, it encouraged other nations of the Warsaw Pact to follow suit.
By the mid 80s, Romania decided to switch calibers, however it was decided that the new rifle be developed independently, and not represent an clone of the Soviet AK-74. In doing so, the PA md. 86 has several anachronistic AKM elements that were found only on the prototype Soviet AK-74.
Features[]
The most easily recognized AKM feature is the gas block design (45 degree versus 90 degree). Incidently, although the gas block is purely AKM, the gas vent in the barrel did change to a 90 degree design to minimize bullet shearing (a problem with early Soviet AK-74's with 45 degree gas blocks). This means the Romanian AK-74 has a double angle gas port, which makes it much harder to clean the gas vent. This variant also uses the AK-47 rear trunnion, and thus the siderail is lengthened.
It uses either the bird-cage flash suppressor, or a flash hider (designed for Special Forces). The design also incorporated an upward curved charging handle, a wire sidefolder, based on the East German design, but offset slightly to the left, and the traditional vertical handgrip.
The md. 86 use laminated wood lower handguards and bakelite pistol grips and upper handguards. None of the components have had any polymer versions.
The AG-40 grenade launcher can be attached as a lower handguard after removing the standard one. Lasers/lights can aso be clamped to the barrel in two ways.
The rifle is one of only 3 AK versions that has a 3-round burst option. The selector markings are as follows, from top to bottom: ∞, 1, 3.
The PA md. 86 uses ribbed steel 30 round magazines as standard.
Variants[]
This rifle also has a rarely seen short, or "Krinkov" version, where the front sight is placed on the gas block, but unlike Russian or Bulgarian "Krinkovs", the rear sight is not modified from the standard version. These occurrence of straight lower handgrips on this version is higher than on any other Romanian AK version.