Fort-12

The Fort-12 (Ukrainian: Форт-12) is a semi-automatic pistol which was designed in the late 1990s by Ukrainian firearms designer RPC Fort.

History
The Fort-12 pistol is an attempt of the independent Ukraine (one of the former USSR republics) to develop its own police pistol to replace Soviet era, aging Makarov PM pistols. To accomplish this task, Ukrainian state-owned FORT factory purchased Czech machinery from Česká Zbrojovka Uherský Brod factory, and by the late 1990s developed its first pistol, the Fort-12.

Early production Fort-12 pistols were reported as only marginally reliable, but at the present time most of the teething problems are gone, and Fort-12 pistol provides some improvements over the older Makarov PM in the ergonomics, accuracy and magazine capacity.

Design details
The Fort-12 is a blowback operated, double action pistol. Frame and slide are made from steel. Manual safety is mounted on the left side of the slide only, and locks the hammer either in cocked or in lowered position. Guns are manufactured in standard grade with matte finish, or in presentational grade, with gold inlays and engravings. Magazine is of double column type, and holds 12 rounds of ammunition, magazine release button is located at the base of the trigger guard, on the left side of the frame.

The only visible minor flaw of the Fort-12 design is the lack of the safe decocking facility.

Users

 * 🇺🇦 Ukraine - first pistols were made in 1995, since 1995 "Fort-12" became an award of President of Ukraine, in 1998 "Fort-12" was adopted as a sidearm for Ministry of Internal Affairs and later it was adopted as a sidearm for security guards

Currently, this gun is issued to the Ukrainian militsiya and security forces and also sold on civilian market chambered for non-lethal rubber ammunition or tear gas ammunition. The Fort 12 is in Ukrainian Service but is only supplementing Makarov PMs in service.