End of the Kalashnikov?

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benEzra: You know, I never thought of it that way, and it does make sense in an industrial psychology sense. In a stressful situation, a soldier will put it on semi (selector all the way down), guaranteeing that they will not let loose 30 rounds into the air in a panicked trigger pull, but instead will have an engineering control to encourage him to put more carefully aimed fire on/in the direction of the target. Its a little backwards, but it honestly does make a lot of sense.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6BpI3xD6h0


Accuracy is all a lie... The M16 hit kill shoots with all rounds at 200 yards, the Ak only hit the paper once at 200 yards.

Oh yeah, the AK is a super accurate weapon on par with real rifles.
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Did you seriously cite to that video in a genuine attempt to demonstrate the inaccuracy of AKs? Excuse me while I have a hardy laugh. You watched that video and didn't see any issues with that "testing"? I suggest you spend a little more time with guns and a little less watching entertainment videos about them.
 
The legend of the AK and the design revolution it started will never end. I cant possibly foresee a day when the AK will not be present on the field of battle. Personally I wouldn't mind one bit if Russia replaced the AK platform. While highly unlikely, if the AK does get replaced, I am sure that the new rifle will be a hybrid of past AK features and modern technology.
 
i think there is a political reason behind the talk of changing weapons, not the weapons performance
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The AK is not aging well in the modern era where small arms are increasingly a collection of components. The issue isn't about accuracy -- Maj Gen (ret) Bob Scales quoted twaddle about six hundred meter accuracy just illustrates why, here in the US, we leave important tasks like shooting people to NCOs and soldiers. The problem is that the AK isn't super well designed for putting optics on it and it just comes up short when you put it up against an M4, G36, etc, in terms of actually gun fighting.
 
I think the AR is decent (the ergonomics are excellent), but the AK is superior in many ways, and in many ways that are imperative.

I'd be shocked if the Soviets abandon the AK platform, rather than update it.
 
ARs are awesome. I love them but the Russians have better plans than listening any wackos from las vegas...

Since AKs are russians I go to them. Izmasah is not an old russian shop that make classic AKs. they have state of the art facilities and some of the best firearms engineers in Russia that always show quality and innovation.

A bit of history...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxEjUOxUfbA

I have a couple of these too...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XxY0xEbUeA

Look at this issued to Russian army...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74K5M07Tir0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfw5eD9FxaY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTaDI2Gr8w


Also if you do not want to believe AKs can be accurate read this thread...
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=567005
 
Hey look on the bright side... if russian somehow decides to replace all their ak's there gonna sell em... and eventually they willl uber-flood the market. Im a fan of dirt cheap guns.
 
:( (Sigh)......I knew the day would come. Now I'll have to retire my AK, so that it can be with my 1925 Colt Government Model, 1915 S&W 2nd Model Hand Ejector (.45 Colt), and my little 1913 Colt .32 auto. Although they all do what they were designed to do (as well today as "back in the day"), the proliferation of plastic and doo-dads has made them obsolete. I'm just going to have to pretend I'm enjoying them when I shoot them, and the targets (and prospective bad guys) will have to try to ignore the fact that they can still deliver mucho mortis and mayhem when called upon to do so.
 
Hey look on the bright side... if russian somehow decides to replace all their ak's there gonna sell em... and eventually they willl uber-flood the market. Im a fan of dirt cheap guns.
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Sadly there really isn't a bright side. You wouldn't see any surplus AK's hitting the US market. 922r prevents the import of "assault rifle" style firearms. That's why Saiga's are imported looking the way they need to be imported as "sporting rifles" with no so called "evil" features.

So if Russia stops using the AK the vast majority will probably end up stock piled in warehouses or sold to international arms dealers and 3rd world countries. Basically what we saw done in the movie Lord of War, sadly that movies is pretty close to reality but still a great movie.
 
Russia's AK platform smallarms "outdated"?

That's a laugh.

--------------------------------------------

Je Suis Prest
 
Long live Kalashnikov's! I highly doubt that this is really going to happen. Yeah they're being phased out slowly but still why change it if it works? I don't believe the article. And +1 to the AK being mod friendly as and AR platform :).
 
Anybody that thinks the Russkie's guns are not accurate can just send them to me... I'll be glad to shoot them as inaccurate :evil: as they are. Hey, I might even send you a dollar for it, if it's in really good shape. Just email me and I'll give you my shop's FFL to ship to...

Oh, since you're dumping those innacurate guns, you won't need all that commie ammo either... if you're close enough, I'll come pick it up too... wouldn't want you to have anything that didn't shoot well...:evil:

Never a problem with any of my Kalishi's... :neener:

WT
 
The AK is a peasant rifle. It's assembled all over the world from cheap stamped parts, and yet seems to keep working. As long as the world has peasants, you'll have AK's.
 
The AK-74M has been discountiniued in Russia, in favor of the AK200, last I heard. What the AK200 offers is a railed return-to-zero top cover, as well as railed front end. As for difficulty of putting optics on the AK? Hardly. If you use the native optical systems of the AK, it is blitheringly easy to install, remove, and hot-swap optics using the side rail. Use what is designed for the AK and its easy. Try to slap optics made for US rifles onto the AK, and you have trouble. By the same virtue, its basically impossible to mount Russian optics onto an AR, and its equally hard to run Linux programs on a Mac.

As for accuracy, as 1stmarine posted in his thread, its not uncommon for the .308 AK to be shooting SUB-MOA at 100 yards with GOOD ammo. That said, animal flavored blasting ammo can't really be considered good ammo, merely adequate.
 
The AK-74M has been discountiniued in Russia, in favor of the AK200, last I heard. What the AK200 offers is a railed return-to-zero top cover, as well as railed front end. As for difficulty of putting optics on the AK? Hardly. If you use the native optical systems of the AK, it is blitheringly easy to install, remove, and hot-swap optics using the side rail.
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People that have never run AKs hard enough to see stoppages with them typically don't have any grasp about considerations that must be addressed when looking at the AK as a fighting rifle.

And the AK side mount is a less effective solution for mounting optics on a weapon. Crappy cheek weld, makes employing a modern/non-firing hand focused manual of arms even harder to use with the AK, limits your ability to adjust eye relief or other placement issues on the weapon and, most importantly, if you have a major stoppage the Russian side mounted optic may get you killed slowing down removing the top cover.

But, as everyone who's ever gone to the range and bump fired a magazine through a WASR knows AKs don't jam :rolleyes: so how you clear AK malfunctions can't be that important.

I used to be responsible for training non-18 series personnel at my last unit on AK employment and have the experience of actually putting a bunch of Joes on the range armed with a mix of Polish AKMs, East German 74s and Bulgarian AR-M1s and seeing what can and will go wrong with AKs when you train to fight with them rather than just treating them as a toy to make the range more fun. And the side optics mount is a good enough solution, not a very good one, when you look at things you really need to be able to do while running a fighting AK.

As for everyone who has leapt in to "prove" you can put rails on an AK -- I never said it cannot be done, I said the design was not terribly well suited to it, specifically in terms of rails and the top cover. And it's not.
 
"Crappy cheek weld, makes employing a modern/non-firing hand focused manual of arms even harder to use with the AK"

Then, that would be the biggest flaw in the approach. AK is meant to be run with the dominant hand, like an AK, not with the weak-hand like an AR. If you try to run an AK like an AR, you'll start to have problems. It'll be slow and awkward. If you run an AK like an AK, its fairly strait-forward and simple affair. For reference, I run both AK's and ARs, and I will say the AR is easier to run.

As for malfunctions that require the removal of the top-cover, I am curious to hear what exact type of malfunctions were those? The main one that I am familiar with, that requires removal of the top-cover, is when someone inserts the magazine incorrectly. Usually, shooters then try to remove the top cover and fenangle the magazine out. My experience, a more efficient solution to this is to lower the weapon aimed at 45 degrees below horizontal, and deliver a swift kick to the back of the magazine, popping it back out of the weapon.

The other type of malfunction I have heard of is the case or foreign debris behind the bolt carrier/fire control components. That said, with my AK (Which has optics mounted over the top cover using the side rail), or the AK200, series, opening the top cover is not any more difficult or time consuming then doing so with a an optic-free AK. In particular, I think the AK200 series may be faster, as the top cover is closed using a similar lever mechanism as the gas tube. Swipe, pop, clear, close, swipe.


The other malfunction that I am familiar with is the occasional bent/bowed firing pin. That does require the removal of the top cover and the installation of a new bolt to make the most expedient repair. This one has no really good field-expedient repair option, honestly.

"But, as everyone who's ever gone to the range and bump fired a magazine through a WASR knows AKs don't jam so how you clear AK malfunctions can't be that important." Lets keep this all high-road, shall we?
 
AK is meant to be run with the dominant hand, like an AK, not with the weak-hand like an AR. If you try to run an AK like an AR, you'll start to have problems. It'll be slow and awkward. If you run an AK like an AK, its fairly strait-forward and simple affair. For reference, I run both AK's and ARs, and I will say the AR is easier to run.
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This may depend on the individual. I shot my AK for a while in USPSA matches, and find that I am considerably faster reloading and cycling the action with the support hand (lock in the magazine with the left hand and reach under to slap the charging handle) than I am reloading with the left and charging with the right.

I do agree that an AR is a little easier to reload (not hugely so, but the magwell is easier to find), but charging isn't really any easier to me. Of course, I charge an AR with the left hand as well. The AR's bolt lock is a nice feature, though, and there is certainly no question that the AR's safety is in a much more convenient location.
 
As for malfunctions that require the removal of the top-cover, I am curious to hear what exact type of malfunctions were those? The main one that I am familiar with, that requires removal of the top-cover, is when someone inserts the magazine incorrectly. Usually, shooters then try to remove the top cover and fenangle the magazine out. My experience, a more efficient solution to this is to lower the weapon aimed at 45 degrees below horizontal, and deliver a swift kick to the back of the magazine, popping it back out of the weapon.
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There is sufficient room inside the AK receiver for a round itself to get loose and completely choke the weapon, especially with 5.45 and 5.56mm versions of the weapon. And there's no shaking those loose. The top cover has to come out, and the bolt carrier has to be finessed loose long enough to get the round loose. These are basically worst case scenarios when running an AK, but they do occur and with sufficient frequency that anyone who is not setting their weapon up with an eye towards being able to correct them is simply not serious about using the AK as a fighting rifle.

The AK side rail is such a mediocre solution because it is the only rifle/optics combo currently in service that I am aware of that actively interferes with clearing stoppages.
 
If I were ever set up an AK as one of my fighting rifles it would be with an RDS mounted forward, not on the top cover - for just the reason HS mentions. But back to the original subject of the thread - since the AK adequately does what it is designed to do in most situations, I expect it will remain Russia's long arm in some form for many years to come.
 
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