armoury
ICS CXP-ARK
ICS CXP-ARK:
A MODERN
CLASSIC
NORMAL SERVICE (AND SOME DEGREE OF SANITY!) RESUMES AT AIRSOFT ACTION, AS
BILL FINALLY GETS BACK TO HIS TRUE LOVE, NAMELY THE “AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOVA”
PLATFORM AND TAKES THE NEW CXP-ARK FROM ICS AIRSOFT
FOR A SPIN ON THE RANGE! DOES HE, LIKE MIKHAIL IN THE
MEME, DISAPPROVE OF ALL THIS “MODERN STUFF”, OR WILL
HIS HEAD BE TURNED BY THE NEWEST KID ON THE BLOCK?
I
do
love a good meme and one of my favourite
“Kalashnikov” ones is the one that goes “this rifle
is steel and wood, it don’t need any of your bubba
shizz”, although I also love the one that simply states
“Mikhail Approves”. There’s been a lot of talk in
purist circles of late, on the theme of how the humble
AK has been transformed into something more
“tacticool” and is the poorer for it but I’m afraid, as
much as I love a classic, I disagree.
Recently I’ve been looking at a number of superb
new “AR” models but as “the regs” will know, I do
love a classic AK - that dark wood and steel mix does
get me all of a-tingle, especially when it’s a solid old
AKM or AKMS! But time, inexorably, moves on and
the fact is that even the Russians themselves have
updated the old campaigner into the AK-12, and I
was reading just yesterday about the AK-15, which is
chambered in the venerable 7.62×39mm cartridge.
Both the AK-12 and AK-15 have been developed by
the Kalashnikov Group under the “Ratnik” program
and have been accepted into Russian military service,
so it seems that even the “home team” have come
to embrace the meld of that superb firearms design,
updated with polymer parts.
For me this is no bad thing, as new technologies
and parts
can put a
shine back on
something that’s been
around for a while and the
not-so-humble-after-all-AK is
having a bit of a renaissance,
in both real and replica terms
- and this brings me great
joy to say the least! I
have a number of
modern loadouts,
some directly
“Soviet” and
some with a more
generalised OPFOR feel that
are incomplete without an AK. I am
slowly working on my own “Ratnik”
gear (with expert input and patient
help from Taz) and now have an
AK-12 for that, along with
a whole heap of MidCap
mags but outside of that,
my much-laughed-about
“Team Three Stripe”
26
OCTOBER 2020