Marco Vorobiev was born and grew up in the Soviet Union, and received the same education as all Soviet boys did at that time. He was introduced to the AK rifle at the tender age of 12. By 15 he could field strip an AK and put it back together in 14 seconds flat. By 16 he had fired an AK rifle on full auto and was able to hit all targets. By 18 he had won two junior national SAMBO championships and achieved Master of Sports rank. He was ready for mandatory military service in the Soviet Armed Forces. Marco’s draft orders came in the summer of 1985. After three months of training he was deployed as a part of a Spetsnaz unit to Afghanistan, where he served as a sniper and later as an assaulter until he was medevaced in February of 1987. After graduating from Railway engineering Institute with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, he moved and settled in the USA, where he began collecting AKs and their variants. Marco has been a member of Kalashnikov Collectors Association since 1997. He is a prolific writer and contributor for firearms media, and has written hundreds of articles on AK history, training, practical application, modification and improvement. He has consulted and appeared in numerous television programs, including Guns and Ammo TV for Sportsman Channel; Foreign Sec Ops for Discovery’s Military Channel (AHC); and the Award Winning documentary “Maidan Massacre.” As a writer-consultant, Marco has handled and tested all of the commercially available AK variants. As a collector-consultant, he has possessed or handled the rarest of the AK variants. He has traveled and met with firearm designers such as Mikhail Kalashnikov, Mikhail and Dmitry Dragunovs, Aleksey Kalashnikov and many others who have been and still are a part of the Russian firearm industry. Notable previous published materials include: - US AK Market Round-up for Guns and Ammo Magazine (Cover), - Practical Fighting Carbine for Shotgun News, - 2-3 articles on various AK variants for the semi-annual G&A Book of the AK