The Washington Post: U.S. special Forces were asked to develop the American equivalent of the AK-47

[vostok]

The special operations command (CSR) of the Armed forces of the United States has asked American companies to develop analogues of Russian weapons, including Kalashnikov rifles, which is commonly used in war zones, writes The Washington Post.

“We are studying the capacity and capability of American industry to produce the kinds of weapons that are used by our many foreign partners”, – said the representative CSR Matt Allen.

“To the request command, in particular, included the iconic “AK-47, Dragunov sniper rifle that killed thousands of American soldiers in the years preceding the Vietnam war, as well as manual and 14.5-mm aircraft machine guns”, – stated in the material.
...
http://news.webplatinum.co/the-wash...develop-the-american-equivalent-of-the-ak-47/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-looks-to-u-s-companies-for-homemade-ak-47s/

 

[Michael Corleone]

But only in their version the rifles will cost 10x what Russians used to make one.

 

[Oldman1]

But only in their version the rifles will cost 10x what Russians used to make one.

In 2015, Buzzfeed chronicled a $28 million contract given to a company called Purple Shovel to send weapons to U.S.-backed Syrian rebels. The contract ran into a myriad of problems after a Bulgarian company shipped faulty rocket-propelled grenades through Purple Shovel to SOCOM, Buzzfeed reported.

According to Allen, an American source for the weapons would be a “good use of taxpayer funds, while also delivering the weapons our partners not only need to fight extremists, but also the ones they know how to use, know how to fix and have the supplies to maintain.”

Producing the weapons in the United States would also allow the government to enforce greater control over their manufacture and distribution.

Building them here would normalize transfers, make oversight easier, and prevent ad-hoc type arrangements like we’ve seen in the past” said Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher with Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group that tracks weapons.

However, it still might be cheaper to buy them elsewhere. Weapons based on Mikhail Kalashnikov’s iconic design have been built and exported by dozens of countries during and after the Cold War. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rifle’s design was distributed to Eastern-bloc countries for manufacture, and only in recent years has Russia’s main arms exporter attempted to clamp down on copyright infringements.

 

[Penguin]

AK-47s or their clones are made in quite a number of countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47#Production

This includes the USA

United States Century Arms: C39 (AK47 var.), RAS47 (AKM var.), and C39v2 (AK47 var.)), InterOrdnance: AKM247 (AKM var.) M214 (pistol), Palmetto State Armory: PSAK-47 (AKM var.), Arsenal Inc: SA M-7 (AK47 var.), Destructive Devices Industries: DDI 47S (AKM var.) DDI 47M (AK47 var), Rifle Dynamics: RD700 and other custom build AK / AKM guns

US AK47 manufacturers (old - stay tuned for an update - map)

Links here: http://ak-47.us/ak-47-information/us-ak-manufacturers/

Kalashnikov cranking up AK-47 factory in Florida
by Aaron Smith and Abigail Brooks @CNNMoney January 27, 2016
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/news/companies/kalashnikov-florida-factory/

East Germany (now part of BRD) produced MPi-K/MPi-KS (AK-47/AKS), MPi-KM (AKM; wooden and plastic stock), MPi-KMS-72 (side-folding stock), MPi-KMS-K (carbine), MPi-AK-74N (AK-74), MPi-AKS-74N (side-folding stock), MPi-AKS-74NK (carbine), KK-MPi Mod.69 (.22 LR select-fire trainer).

And then there are former Warsaw pact nations in Eastern Europe, and Ukraine.

Plenty of sources, I would think.