The UBR, or Ultimate Battle Rifle is a concept that I’ve been kicking around for a long time. Something that I would design, scratch out, then design again as I found new parts that I thought would work better than what I had already picked out.

I wanted an AK with an Eotech setup, and rails from the rear of the dust cover to the gas block so that you could have a full cowitness setup. Having a full cowitness is something severely lacking in the AK platform.

With the combination of a Polish Beryl rail and Samson K-Rail, the top rail platform and sight radius I wanted was possible. Once that has been solved we are presented with the bigger problem of having sights meant for the AR platform on top of the higher sight line of the AK, this raises the sight line more than an inch over what it used to be.

Thankfully Mission First has made a completely ridiculous riser setup for their Battlelink stocks. I’ve been using the MFT stocks for a couple months now and I’m very happy with them so far (review is upcoming) but the real star here is the Battlelink riser. The riser raises the cheek weld by 1.25 inches. I suppose this is for high mounted scopes on precision AR rifles, but for us it is the ideal height for using with an Eotech equipped AK. I wish it was just a bit more sturdy, but while actually shooting I haven’t had any problems.

These key features really make this whole build possible. To help balance it out the barrel was cut down to 14.5 inches and an Ares Armor Effin-A was permanently welded to make the overall length 16.1 inches. This also removed the original front sight post.

Now we’ve already told you how powerful a tuned Effin-A is, but we coupled it with a straight M4 stock that is centered as close to the bore line as possible and an internal buffer pad to absorb some of the inertia from the bolt carrier travelling to the rear of the receiver. The final result is significantly reduced recoil and nearly no movement of the muzzle while firing, even during extremely rapid fire.

There is more, both in labor and in custom parts, some of which are fairly standard things (bolt knob, extended safety) so I wont get into that.

The last thing was that with this particular gun, adding a side folder makes it a big gun. I have long monkey arms and when fully collapsed, its the same length that I adjust my stock to on my regular AK, one or two points back on the telescoping buttstock. It would not be a problem however to make a fixed stock version that can comfortably fit anyone.

Enough babbling, I’ll discuss in more detail when we have real pictures taken and post some video.