Larry Kahaner is the author of the just-published AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War. This is his first post for Defense Tech.
In our quest for the latest and most sophisticated weaponry we sometimes tend to overlook a major success in low-tech arms. But there’s a lot we can learn from them – especially the AK-47 assault rifle.
The AK-47 is the world’s most popular military weapon. At last count, there may be as many as 100 million of these uncomplicated but deadly rifles in use. That’s one AK for every 60 people. It is used by about 50 legitimate armies as well as terrorists – Osama Bin Laden calls it the terrorist’s most important weapon – insurgents, drug cartels, paramilitary groups and guerrillas.
The rifle, first produced in 1947 – hence the name AK-47 for Automatic Kalashnikov 1947 – has undergone very few changes since it was first produced by Soviet soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov. The furniture has been replaced with low weight plastics, and a few other mods here and there depending upon which of the 19 countries produced it, but it is essentially the same weapon it was 60 years ago.
What accounts for its success? Quite simply: it works. Despite its low price (as little as $10 and as much as $300) and often shoddy workmanship, this rifle rarely jams, is almost indestructible, and is easy to fire with no training. Overnight, it can transform paramilitary forces, thugs and street gangs into formidable armies.
It is not very accurate but can fire about 700 rounds per minute. Many western military experts consider it a piece of junk, but it’s perfect for poorly-trained soldiers because they can ’spray and pray.’ And indeed, it is a piece of junk compared to the M-16A2 now used in Iraq or the shorter barreled version M-4. These rifles are well built, accurate and engineered to close tolerances. They are technological things of beauty. The AK, on the other hand has loose tolerances, feels like it will shake apart (but doesn’t) and won’t make any friends at the marksmen club. These loose tolerances are the open secret to the AK’s almost jam-free history. It’s also why you can drag it through mud, leave it buried in the sand and take it out a year later, kick it with your boot, and it will fire like it was cleaned that morning. Again, because of its imprecision, the AK can fire poorly produced ammunition as well as ammo that has been sitting and deteriorating in the jungle or desert.
When the Defense Department offered M-16s to the Iraqi police and army, they refused. They wanted AKs which had to be bought from Jordan (the weapons actually were made in Germany). Indeed, like their brethren in Vietnam, many US soldiers are using AKs in Iraq despite official sanctions against the practice.
As the Pentagon planers ponder what’s next for infantry firearms, they need to think in terms of simple instead of complex and practical instead of sophisticated. There’s no reason why soldiers should be using M-4s that overheat or place condoms over their gun barrels to keep out the desert sands.
The solution has not come for lack of trying. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the Army was developing a new assault rifle known as the XM8 project an outgrowth of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program, which was to produce a new type of battle rifle. The main goal of the XM8 program was to find a replacement for the M-16 and M4.
However, by late 2005, the XM8 was scrapped partially because of politics; Congress was reluctant to spend billions to outfit soldiers with new rifles while the Iraq war was draining the treasury.
The real problem may be that as the program progressed, military planners kept adding bells and whistles to the rifle system — even including an electronic bullet counter — and it became too complex, heavy and unwieldy. Designers would have done better to simply aim for a new infantry rifle that works as well as the AK-47 and be just as simple.
The AK may not be the best rifle for the US but designers can learn from Kalashnikov’s experience in building the AK-47. He often found himself guided by the words of arms designer Georgy Shpagin, who developed the successful PPSh41 submachine gun: “Complexity is easy; simplicity is difficult.”
Good Morning Folks,
Ah, at last the AK myth debunked. This story could have been writen exactly as is fourty years ago. As the author of the above article say the only virtue of the AK’s, there are now two types the 47 and 74, is that the damn thing works.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Same reason the M1911 is still so popular. Reliable as all hell, solid, and you’ll know when it hits you. On the other hand, M1911 also shows that you can have all that and still have some precision. Hence, my love of the Mk. 17 SCAR.
Hrm….. it seems the people at my gun forum do not like this article at all.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=230072
As long as collateral damage remains a concern for US forces, the AK is not a solution.
There is a lot to be said for the reliability of the AK, but the real reality is that in modern warfare, the rifle itself is rather insignificant in deciding battle outcomes -= but don’t tell that to an Infantryman.
The M-16 is now America’s longest serving rifle. Perhaps not as reliable as as the AK, but more accurate. It is better suited to mounting optical sights, lasers and other items that inprove the soldiers ability to deliver effective fire.
But don’t expect to see any real improvements in the rifle anyway. The technology has reached it’s apex. The next big step in infantry weapons will be with a whole new technology. Consider the OICW/SABR.
…..and what was true for my unit in Vietnam forty years ago remains true. M14’s became priceless as backup SAW’s and penetrators of light cover.
The first requirement of an infantry weapon is that it function reliably. Any perputed advantage of technical sophistication is pointless when it doesn’t work. The 7.62X39MM cartridge is to the 5.56MM as the 5.56 was to the 7.62 NATO (.308); a seeming devolution in performance that masks a superior utility, while the AK47 is a superb battle weapon for short range infantry use. Lets face it, over a hundred meters is now the province of specialized marksmen or mounted weapons. In practical terms it always has been.
During World War II the Allied navies and air services discovered that more sophisticated and capable platforms were battle winners, even though the crews were resentful of the required training and increased maintenance. Somehow, this lesson has come to be applied in every area of force application. It doesn’t always work, especially in land warfare. Usually you end up with 20-50% more effectiveness at 20 times the price. The Hummer and the 1/2 ton truck are an excellent example. You can’t make a Hummer an AFV, no matter how hard you try, so go Hi-Lo with AFV’s escorting cheap trucks and jeeps and spend the money saved on improved surveillance. Similarly, you can’t make Joe Jarhead a killer at 100% yards in the heat of battle. Give him a weapon that shoots a decent AP ALL THE TIME at the 30-40 meter range of urban combat. As for mounting accessories, an American variant of the AK47 can have any damn mounting system we want. Just don’t get too fancy….
Every squad should have one man armed with an AK-47. That way, if you want to smoke some bastard’s
ass for killing your buddy – they find “bad guy”
shell casings and AK47 holes in his dead ass…..
Fuck fighting fair – just make it to the “Freedom
Bird” home……….
Get some!
Sarge
… good for fragging treads and 90 day wonders, too.
The ak is indeed a piece of reliable simplicity,
simplicity in operation is indeed a good thing in
any mechanism.however,simplicity without effectiveness does not a war win.The ak was created with the express purpose of skirmish warfare in mind,a function for which it is eminantly qualified.it is an outgrowth of the way the soviets fought close combat in ww2,emphasis on CLOSE combat.300 meters or less.Effective within that envelope in the hands of poorly trained conscripts and wahabist insergants, assuming their indexing the antiquated open,nagant inspired sights.
in an age where you can mount an electro-optic
on a finely tuned AR platform chambered in 6.5
grendel or 7.62 nato/300 winmag.sweetspotted to
strike at 600 meters and beyond,that simple rifle
and the close quarters,soviet era skirmish warfare
doctrine suddenly goes straight out the window,as
our friends the jihadis ar finding out,much to
their chagrin.
Let the badguys have the ak’s and we,ll keep
the refined product we have now.Johnny Jihad can
go on rattling away with said simple rifle,using
the very ineffective technique of beirut offhand
(i,e,fireing overhead,around corner,blindly).
hopeing that allah will direct the bullets into
the infidels body(which will be protected by a
sapi plate,sorry hasan).While he’s doing allahs
will the marine with the M-16a4 with ACOG reflex
sight loaded with MK 262/77grain sierra matchking
ammo will take calm,deliberate aim,hold breath and squeeze.The result will be one martyr sent to his
predestined reward with an empty kalashnikov next
to his now inert body and one marine,still living
with 29 more chances to help mr martyrs friends
reach paradise.
This is the ultimate lesson of the simplicity
to be found in the AK and its effectiveness.
Interesting read!
Have you fired from AK47 before?
Steven Burda, MBA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/burda
Not all weapon manufacturers produce low quality AK-47s. I’ve shot myself a model that was deadly accurate upto ca. 600 meters range. It costed some 1000 euros and worked always like a charm.
I wetted it, froze it at -40 celsius degrees, hit it repeatedly to trees and ground, shot enough with it to make the barrel glow red hot (kids, that is HOT!), took it apart, cleaned, reassembled, … I had only one failure to operate in weeks of 24/7 usage and that was because the box was literally full of ice (the ammo couldn’t move anymore, I had to remove the ice).
It is a very pleasant weapon to shoot with. It practically has no back kick for shooter and for aimer it’s pleasant push to back/up and practically returns automatically to the same spot. At 700m/s those 7.62s make pretty holes to stuff and they work through light leaves and rain – unlike the faster smaller caliber stuff.
AK47 and its derivatives > the rest.
Nice article, but you need to brush up on your Russian. Avtomat Kalashnikov does NOT mean “automatic Kalashnikov.” Avtomat in Russian means “machine gun.”
A fairly good article I thought. Never had and AK with full automatic. Some examples are actually quite well made. The accuracy comment in the commentary is interesting. My comment last year was “for chrise sake you hit a jack rabbit running at 250 yards.” Certainly the accuracy is within the range of whatever the shooter is capable of doing. Of course it doesnt have in excess of 3000 feet per second rounds like the M 16, but neither does it cost 1500 bucks a whack to buy one. Since I don’t shoot that well anyway who cares if I can send and accurate bullet for 300 yards anyway. I think snipers for the military bring in the .308 or fifty caliber stuff anyway at that range.
I was watching TV when the Afghan thing started and the army mountain brigaid was in the video. They were carrying AKs. jeez the rifle must work, and then take the ammo from a dead Taliban instead of lugging that 223 stuff around.
Jams and training and cleaning rifles in the middle of a freaking life death situation seems problematic to me on the outside. To me the analogy would be rather the same with WWII rifles. You rather have a fine close tolerance K 98 Mauser or a cheapass Mosen Nagant?
Please remember that the AK-47 is a copy of the (WW2) German Mauser MP-44, which was scaled up for the new round! (also German) Kalsashnikov is just the man who scaled the MP-44 for the new round!!!
The addition of AK-47’s does not transform thugs into armies, it transforms them into thugs with automatic weapons. There is much more to being a soldier than a rifle, much more.
And the OIC weapon program was never really aimed at creating a replacement rifle for the US military. It was simply an attempt by H&K to sell the US government expensive hardware, for which there was no practical need. Once the OIC (20mm) program was scrapped for being impractical, something any infantryman could have told them years and millions of dollars ago, the XM8 was spun off in an attempt to salvage at least some of the government contract dollars H&K craved.
The lesson to be learned from the AK-47 and from the MP-44 is that medium power rifle cartridges fit the tactical requirements for an assault rifle. The M-16 needs a calibre change, more than it needs a redesign, although I agree that any design can be made better and you might as well add as many functional improvements as possible while the calibre is being changed. But you can’t base design change on urban myth and sales pitches.
I have to aggree with the guys about the caliber. All of that hydrostatic shock hoopla is just that. And don’t believe any of that tumbling nonsense either. M-16’s haven’t allowed the round to tumble since the introduction of the A1 in the early 70’s.
Sectional desnity is the key to knockdown power and any .30 cal round will hit harder than any .22 cal round. The same holds true for the .45 ACP verses the 9mm Parabellum in handguns. Even the cops gave up on 9mm handguns.
What we really need is a move back to 7.62×52 (the good old NATO round) in a better platform (bullpup, better recoil buffering, and 30 round magazines). That would give us superior range, knockdown, and accuracy to the old AK. And for up close and personal defence an updated .45 (maybe the HK USP like you see the Delta boys using).
Posted by: James Fahey at November 3, 2006 07:50 AM”Please remember that the AK-47 is a copy of the (WW2) German Mauser MP-44, which was scaled up for the new round! (also German) Kalsashnikov is just the man who scaled the MP-44 for the new round!!!”
In correct. The AK-47 was designed to perform the same job as the German MP series but shares little with the MP except overall layout. The function, operation, and design philosopy are compltetely different.
There are some similarities, but that is common in war/weapons. TO say that the AK-47 and MP series are copies would be similar to saying that the SU-27 is a copy of the F-15.
The Israeli’s are no slouches when it comes to knowing what does and what does not work in combat. Maybe that is why they designed their own ‘4th generation Kalishnikov’ in the Galil rifle? Their choice of 5.56mm caliber to use existing ammo supplies was not very inspired. Their current use of a lighter weight version of the Galil with modular barrel lengths available for different missions makes sense in their primarily urban combat environment.
If it was up to me, I think a matte finish stainless steel Galil chambered in the available off the shelf 7mm-08 Remington would be about perfect. The short action cartridge of a 7mm-08 would be well suited for military use, and be an adequate one shot man stopper that the current 5.56mm is not. It would still retain the mild recoil characteristics that make training large numbers of inexperienced shooters more easy as well. It definitely could reach out and touch someone with greater range and precision than any 7.62X39mm rifle.
The AK is a work of art. Allways goes bang, allways nails the target, allways does the job. Every AK I have ever shot has been about as accurate as I am; not to brag, but I’m a better shot than the average soldier. If you need 800 yard pin-point accuracy use a sniper rifle; the 7.62X39 is perfect for everything closer.
fFnd the people that designed the Bell and Howell filmo movie cameras and put them together with the Ak-47 people. You’ll have a durable and accurate weapon.
I THOUGHT THE X-8 WAS DEAD. POSTINGS SAID IT COST TOO MUCH, DIDN’T OFFER ANYTHING EXTRA, THAT THE M-4 WAS SUPERIOR COZ OF THE EXTRAS YOU CAN ADD. SAME WITH THE M-16A2. I READ THERE IS NOW AN M-16A3, FULL AUTO, AND BETTER THAN X-8, AND THE AK. SO, WAT IS TRUE? SOMEONE FIND IT AND POST IT. EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT, SO FIND THE TRUTH, AND SHUT THEM UP. IS THERE A FULLY AUTO M-16A3?
The M4/M203 kit (collectively called and funded as “SOPMOD” for Special Operation MODification) is one of the more versitile individual-served weapon systems on the planet. The Russians have an analog of it for the AK series, and it’s equally impressive. In fact, a couple facets of their array are superior.
The biggest thing wrong with SOPMOD is that it doesn’t address the shortcomings of the M4 being a “cut-down” version of the M16. When designers wanted a shorter, easier-to-handle carbine version of the 16, they simpler shortened it. This included shortening the gas tube, resulting in imperfect timing, shorter time to tube failure, higher rates of bolt and bolt carrier failure, higher erosion rate at the gas tube inlet, and a host of other problems. A few MILSPEC being replaced w/ commercial parts (tested by engineers at NAVSEA, Crane) resulted in some improvements in reliability, but the root problem was never resolved fully.
The “accessories kit” aspect of SOPMOD is unsurpassed in the US inventory, and the folks at Picatenny are slowly catching on that the there is no single end-all, do-all rifle / sight/ cleaning kit solution.
Where the US grunts have there biggest advantage, however, is certainly not with their hot-rod 22 rounds, but with the “visual augmentation” gear (NVG’s, Holosights, red dot sights, rugged and conventional dayscopes, etc.) and reliable means of mounting these items. That is what SOPMOD is all about. Although I haven’t been a part of SOPMOD for a couple years now, I still believe it is money well spent — and there are very few DoD programs that make me feel that way. OICW will likely result in an unweildy, unreliable, WAY-over-budget, WAY-too-complicated POS that no one will want to carry. Now you know why I no longer work for the DoD…
My personal weapon of choice for CQB is the M1A1 Carbine. I only wish it could accept all the accessories of the SOPMOD Kit.
As I understand it, the AK-47 reflects the overall weapons design philosophy of the USSR/Russian Federation: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). The T-34 also was a simple design, uncomplicated, yet reliable and easy to produce and repair. The Red Army saw the Wehrmacht’s sophisticated (for the time) tanks break down and turn into expensive, useless monuments to over-design and over-engineering. Although this design philosophy goes hand-in-hand with a mass conscript army such as the Red Army, I wonder if it will continue as Russia goes to a professional army.
As for the ability of the AK-47 to function in adverse environments, this is just where the US will fight for the foreseeable future. The deserts of Iraq, Afghanistan, (and Iran?), the jungles of Southeast Asia, are dusty, dirty, wet, humid, and overall rough. Why send US forces to fight there without a weapon that will stand up to the local environment?
It seems telling that more than a few US forces in Iraq have dropped their M-16s in favor of the AK-47, just as they did in Vietnam. Friends of mine who fought in Vietnam tell me the AK-47 was superior weapon for one simple reason: it was there when you needed it.
Bring back the M14. Great Desert weapon. Very hard to jam and a good reach out and touch range. It is a little heavier than the AK but with modifications the weight can be reduced.
I think that the main battle weapon should not be set. It should be flexible, based on location and characteristics of the enemy. For example, over in Iraq the soldiers should be able to use any and every AK they can get their hands on. If they need more, buy some new AK-104’s, outfit each unit, and carry on. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, sell off excess weapons; either back to the occupied country government, gun dealers, or the U.S. to licensed individuals/dealers.
When a new situation arises (oh, it will) just adapt to the environment.
IMO the ruger mini 30, is the happy medium between the loose Ak and the precise m16.
The 7.62×39 round is a very clean firing round. I believe this is another aid to the AK.
The mini 30 uses simple assembly like the AK, but is much tighter and more accurate.
It has a wood stock, which could be replaced with modern lighter man made products, and needs a flash suppressor.
My brother has an AK, and I the Mini 30. This is how I can compare them.
I think we have the technology to make a rifle worthy of the stressers of war, without spending
billions to remake the wheel.
The more complicated a weapon, the more it will way, or the more thought it will take to operate it. The Ak is lock, load and fire.
Anything more may get the soldier killed.
How about just modifying what is out there rather then trying to design something from scratch.
what a bunch of armchair commando bullshit. in five tours between iraq and afganistan, ive yet to see ANYONE discard a m16 for a damn AK. and yes, AKs do jam, and yes, THE iraqis did buy m16s from us, to the order of 150000 rifles (defense industray daily did a report on it) because our m16s actually jam less than their AKs (admittedly due to proper weapons maintenance). the M4 is a piece of crap, that’s why the marines kept the m16. but no one would rather have an ak, and any jack ass that thinks that “spray and pray” is a legit tactic need only look a the casualty differences in actual battles over the last 60 years. spraying increases the POSSIBILITY of a hit, AIMING increases the PROBABILITY of a hit.