What about also relaxing manufacturing tolerances a bit? IIRC, one of reasons why AK-47 gets its reputation for reliability are loose tolerances, which means that you can get quite a bit of mud and dust between the moving parts before they stop moving.
It would work, but it also depends on many things including design,
in AR pattern rifles keeping tighter tolerances is desired because the opening at breech face has many locking lugs (on that barrel extension) and of course similar interacting lugs on the rotating bolt, so any outside material obstructing its operation is undesired, so tigheter builds with as little opening as possible, specially around critical parts is the way to go to keep outside gunk from reaching inside as possible*
*However it's also a thing that tighter tolerances means relatively narrower designs etc so it's also cumbersome to clean etc but overall an acceptable tradeoff
AK, on the other hand, was given looser tolerances because the design itself is semi-open type, with locking lugs clearly visible (and in reach of outside gunk) when cycling, also soviet philosophy of 'soldier proofing' etc required it to have additional internal spacing for some acceptable level of ingress as well as easier cleaning-mitigation etc, also AK design is slightly 'stretched' one than needed to be for desired reliability purposes etc...
^so it worked on the AK,
while on AR well...first AR pattern one with relatively loosed tolerances was AR-18 and during trials it mostly failed reliability trials against dust-mud things in both US and UK trials (they did note it that with some proper revisions it could be turned into an acceptable weapon though), later when UK adoped a bullpup-ised variant of same that SA-80 series was we all know how it fared...
Also other such case, British L1A1 SLR, that also had looser tolerances etc, plus when they cut those 'sand cuts' on its bolt carrier so some acceptable level of sand-dust-shits etc ingress could stick around on those surfaces and not fail the actions etc, but it mostly didn't work...
^probably due to all these previous experiences they don't go towards lighter tolerances thing much, me thinks
VHS-2 is also in practice an AR-derivative rifle so they mostly followed what worked with AR designs,
still taking hypothetical scenario in mind,
i think they should've increased internal spacing of trigger extension side in pistol grip at least, there is some space but from disassembly part in the vdo it seems walls of the body and barrel part has somewhat narrower openings there (for keeping it compact ?) so yeah increasing some spacing etc in those sections would do it, perhaps?
but i am overall skeptical about opening up the bolt carrier side part, it's an AR design after all, probably redesign of surfaces there that is like walled around (for shell deflectors etc, as well as that dust cover locking part on receiver side etc) the ejection port would make some changes...i mean shape it in a way that mud etc doesn't easily slip on the surface and go inside when it cycles etc or something else...
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