[Raellus]

I think that the game designers way back in '84 were not aware that the AK-74 was in production (or soon would be) anywhere else besides the Soviet Union. Liscence-built AKMs, however, were being produced throughout the Warsaw Pact and so must have seemed like they would be more numerous than the AK-74 for many years to come (at least until WWIII started in '95-'96).

I can't blame them for this assumption. I didn't know until very recently that AK-74 copies were being manufactured anywhere other than Poland (the Wz.88 Tantal). My Osprey Warsaw Pact Ground Forces (copyright 1987) makes no mention of 5.45mm AKs being used by any of the WP armies and all of the photos and color plates show troops carrying AKM clones (with the exception of the Czechs who carried their own look-alike 7.62mm S assault rifle).

It turns out that, in addition to the USSR and Poland, Romania, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia (at the very least) were all manufacturing AK-74 clones by the late 1980s (RL). By '95, most, if not all, first-line WP units would have been equipped with 5.45mm AKs and production of 5.45mm ammo and additional rifles would have been in full swing. AKMs would have been mothballed and/or sold off to pro-Soviet client states around the globe. You would still be seeing them in WP use c. 2000, but they would be much less common than the AK-74 and its variants.

So, taking updated RW history into account, as well as the difficulties of reworking AK-47s and AKMs to fire the 5.45mm round AND the fact that the Russians have since gone the route of manufacturing new 7.62mm AKs (i.e. the AK103 series) instead of rechambering old AKs, it seems like the AKMR would never have been born. It was an imaginative attempt to give the WP some uniformity of ammunition and I commend the designers for their inventiveness. However, in light of these recent findings, I can't in good conscience keep the AKMR in my T2KU.