The weapon's chief designers were Valery Telesh, responsible for the GP-25 and GP-30 under-barrel grenade launchers,[5] and Yuri Lebedev.[2] The team set out to design an integrated and modular system that would incorporate all the best features of a close-combat long gun into a single weapon based on the AKS-74U. Prototypes were ready for testing in less than a year and the weapon was ready for production by early 1994.