The AR-M1 is a

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

n assault rifle designed primarily for export. It is a modernized Bulgarian development of the AK, which itself is a copy of the earlier Soviet Type-3 milled receiver

AK-47 The AK-47, officially known as the Avtomat Kalashnikova (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is an assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms designer Mikhail Kala ...

. There are two versions of the AR-M1. One chambered in

5.56×45mm NATO The 5.56×45mm NATO (official NATO nomenclature 5.56 NATO, commonly pronounced "five-five-six") is a rimless bottlenecked centerfire intermediate cartridge family developed in the late 1970s in Belgium by FN Herstal. It consists of the SS109, ...

, and the other in the Soviet

7.62×39mm The 7.62×39mm (also called 7.62 Soviet, formerly .30 Russian Short) round is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate cartridge of Soviet origin. The cartridge is widely used due to the global proliferation of the AK-47 rifle and related Kalashn ...

cartridge.

History

During the late 1950s, the

Bulgarian People's Army The Bulgarian People's Army (, BNA) was the army of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. It comprised the Bulgarian Land Forces, Air Force and Air Defence, Navy and supporting arms. Bulgaria was one of the signatories of the Warsaw Pact. Along with ...

was equipped with

s imported from the Soviet Union. However, by the early 1960s, the Bulgarian government became interested in producing the AK assault rifle domestically. Assembly of AKs, initially from imported Soviet parts, began at the

Arsenal AD JSC Arsenal AD () is a Bulgarian joint-stock company based in Kazanlak, engaged primarily in the manufacture of firearms and military equipment. It is Bulgaria's oldest arms supplier. History The company's history can be traced back to 1878 w ...

state arsenal in

Kazanlak Kazanlak ( , known as Seuthopolis () in ancient times, is a List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, town in Stara Zagora Province, Bulgaria. It is located in the middle of the plain of the same name, at the foot of the Balkan Mountains, Balkan mo ...

. By the mid 1960s, the Kazanlak facility was equipped to begin licensed production of the weapon type and its associated parts. Kalashnikov rifles assembled and later manufactured in Kazanlak received the designation ''AKK''. A derivative with a folding stock was also produced under license as the ''AKKS''. After the dissolution of the

People's Republic of Bulgaria The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; , NRB; ) was the official name of Bulgaria when it was a socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; ) together with its coalition partner, the Bulgarian Agraria ...

in the early 1990s, the Kazanlak factory became a

joint-stock company A joint-stock company (JSC) is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareho ...

known as

. Arsenal offered several modernized variants of the AKK for export, which were rebranded as the ''AR'' series. The ''AR'' pattern rifles are AKKs with different furniture and a few unique features, such as polymer stocks and handguards, as well as several external parts copied directly from the

AK-74 The AK-74 ( Russian: , tr. ''Avtomat Kalashnikova obraztsa 1974 goda'', lit. 'Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1974') is an assault rifle designed by small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1974 as a successor to the AKM. While primarily ...

including new flash hiders, sights, gas blocks, bayonet mountings and bayonets. AR-M1 receivers are milled, rather than stamped (unlike the

AKM The AKM () is an assault rifle designed by Soviet small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1959. It was developed as the successor to the AK-47 adopted by the Soviet Union a decade prior. Introduced into service with the Soviet Army in 19 ...

), and are virtually indistinguishable from those of the early pattern Soviet AKs. A derivative of the AKKS is also offered for export as the ''ARF''.

Variants

The following are/were manufacted by Arsenal AD. * AR-M1 / AR-M1F - improved AKK copy with a

flash suppressor A flash suppressor, also known as a flash guard, flash eliminator, flash hider, or flash cone, is a device attached to the muzzle (firearms), muzzle of a rifle that reduces its Muzzle flash, visible signature while firing by cooling or dispersin ...

, black polymer stock set, luminous spots on the

iron sight Iron sights are a system of physical alignment markers used as a sighting device to assist the accurate aiming of ranged weapons such as firearms, airguns, crossbows, and bows, or less commonly as a primitive finder sight for optical telescope ...

s and a rail for mounting

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...

. Chambered in

and

. * AR-M2 / AR-M2F - improved AK-74 copy like the AR-M1/AR-M1F, but with a shortened barrel,

AKS-74U The AK-74 (Russian: , tr. ''Avtomat Kalashnikova obraztsa 1974 goda'', lit. 'Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1974') is an assault rifle designed by small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1974 as a successor to the AKM. While primarily a ...

front sight base and

muzzle booster A muzzle booster or recoil booster is a device fixed to the Muzzle (firearms), muzzle of a firearm, intended to harness the energy of the escaping propellant to augment the force of recoil on portions of the firearm. In spite of its name, a muzzle ...

/flash suppressor hybrid. * AR-M4SF - extremely short development of the AR-M1 with

red dot sight A red dot sight is a common classification for a non- magnifying reflector (or reflex) sight that provides an illuminated red dot to the user as a point of aim. A standard design uses a red light-emitting diode (LED) at the focus of collimati ...

, provision to mount a

night Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of ...

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

laser sight A laser sight is a device attached or integral to a firearm to aid target acquisition. Unlike Telescopic sight, optical and Iron sights, iron Sight (device), sights where the user looks through the device to aim at the target, laser sights projec ...

. Chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×39mm. * AR-M7F - like the AR-M1, but with an

AK-101 The AK-101 is a Kalashnikov assault rifle model developed in 1994 to use the 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge. It belongs to the export AK-100 (rifle family). The design of this rifle is similar to the AK-74, AK-74M. The AK-101 is constructed using com ...

-style folding stock. * AR-M9 / AR-M9F - improved AK-74 copy like the AR-M1/AR-M1F, features a thumb-operable fire selector and a different style polymer stock set. * AR / AR-F - improved

copies with black polymer lining and optional luminous sights. *

Trichy assault rifle The Trichy assault rifle, sometimes known as the Tiruchi assault rifle (TAR), is an Indian-made assault rifle based on the AR-M1 manufactured by Arsenal AD. It was developed and manufactured by Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli (OFT), now made b ...

- Indian clone of the AR-M1 series.

Users

* * : AR-M14SF used by the Military Police. * * : AR-M4SF used by the

Police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

. * * : 3500 5.45mm AR-M1 rifles imported * : 5.56mm AR-M4SF used by the

. *:

Railway Protection Force The Railway Protection Force (RPF) is an armed police force of the Union under the Ministry of Railways, Government of India. The force was established by the RPF Act, 1957, enacted by the Indian Parliament for "the better protection and secur ...

Central Armed Police Forces The Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) consist of seven armed police organizations under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India, tasked with maintaining internal security, law and order, counterinsurgency, and protecting borde ...

. * : AR-M1F used by

Tontaipur The Combat Reconnaissance Platoon (, abbreviated as Tontaipur) is an elite special unit formation of the Indonesian Army in a platoon level to conduct special reconnaissance (SR) operations. Its members are recruited from the Indonesian Army's eli ...

. * : 751 5.56mm AR-M1F rifles, also AR-M1s * * : 11th ''Lightning'' Battalion uses AR-M9s. * : Special forces using AR-M52T rifles. * : Philippine Army confirmed use of AR-M52F assault rifle from Bulgaria during 125th founding anniversary on 23 March 2022, used by First Special Forces Regiment. * : Arsenal AR. * : Used by DANAB Brigade. * : AR-M9s * : AR-9F used by Ugandan Army. * : AR-M9s * : AR-M9Fs in 5.56mm NATO, bought as part of

Operation Interflex Operation Interflex is the operational code name for the British-led multinational military operation to train and support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is a successor to Operation Orbital (2015–2022) and began in July 2022. Unlike its pred ...

. * : AR-M1s in 5.56mm NATO, used by the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment in their role as the

opposing force An opposing force (alternatively enemy force, abbreviated OPFOR or OpFor) is a military unit tasked with representing an enemy, usually for training purposes in war game scenarios. The related concept of aggressor squadron is used by some ai ...

at the

Joint Multinational Readiness Center Hohenfels (literally ''High Cliffs'') is a municipality in the district of Neumarkt in the region of Upper Palatinate () in Bavaria, Germany. The town is host to the United States Army Garrison Hohenfels, which operates the Joint Multinational R ...

. * : AR-M9s

Notes

References

{{AK47 derivatives 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifles 7.62×39mm assault rifles Assault rifles of Bulgaria Kalashnikov derivatives