Ever wondered what has happened to the AK-50 project, a rifle that is based on the Kalashnikov designed that will fire the .50 BMG round? The project is taking long because of the technical challenges so it still in the prototyping stages, but it is still an ongoing thing. So while we wait, The AK Guy, Brandon Herrera, who is the designer of the AK-50, has revealed an AK-50 lite.

The AK-50 lite, according to Herrera and reported by The Firearm Blog, used the .50 Beowulf round, is a a 12mm cartridge designed by Bill Alexander of Alexander arms that can be fired by the AR-15 rifles. The case of the body is not dissimilar to the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver cartridge. It is nowhere like the .50 BMG, they only share the nominal caliber.

Since it has a rebated rim that matches the rim of the 7.62×39mm round used in the AK-47 and the latest AK-15 rifle, it does not take much modification to be able to chamber it to an AK rifle, which is exactly what Herrera did for his AK-50 lite project.

Herrera built the AK-50 lite with no intention to produce more of this model, but perhaps to fill in while we continue to wait for a production version of the AK-50. For now, this is the nearest that we can have an AK the fires a “.50” round while The AK guy continues to work on the biggest AK project of his life.

Watch the video below as Herrera gives us an overview of the AK-50 Lite and does a test shoot.