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Having fired all three models (I own an AK74 using the slimmer 5.45x39mm round) I can agree with above posters on the range and accuracy of the M-16 version so far surpasses the AK variants there is no comparison. I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards. When shopping, I opted to buy the AK74 variant that uses the round closer to the M-16/NATO round. And I was happy I did, as the 74 version does have greater accuracy, simply due to the ballistics of the round, but only marginally.

The 47 was just so hugely massed produced for so many years in so many countries, it will be in use for a long time.

Real Men Shoot Rolling Block Remingtons.

 Elbows wrote:

Backfire wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

The AK47 is significantly heavier than the M16A4 and the ammunition is even heavier. The AK47 is harder to handle as well due to increased recoil which is why it is in fact very inaccurate except at short range.

Original AK-47 (milled receiver) weights about 3.8kg. AKM (stamped receiver) weighs about 3.1kg. M16A2/A4 weigh about 3.4kg. So differences are hardly huge. AK is about 13cm shorter than M16.

One thing which AK has going for it is the magazine. AK magazines are sturdy and durable, and magazine release is idiot-proof. By contrast, 5.56mm STANAG magazine is flimsy and magazine release is finicky and prone to freezing etc.

Without going too overboard into it, the cartridge/magazine are one of the primary components which leads to the reliability of the AK itself. If you design from a cartridge...then the magazine...then the rifle you end up with a better end product. The 7.62x39 and the 5.45x39 are cartridges which are more tapered than 5.56. This slight increase in taper aids in extraction (picture a triangle/cone being pulled out of a slot, vs. a cylinder being pulled out of a slot, etc.) It's exceptionally minimal difference, but present. The taper of the bullet is also why you have the standard "banana" shaped magazine, so the non-tilt follower (standard in AK magazines) can smoothly guide the bullets into the chamber without disturbing how they sit.

The rock-n-lock magazine design also means that the rounds don't "straighten" out when entering the receiver like an AR does. They keep in line with the follower and their own tapered design when being fed. Couple that with a spring which is about twice the length of an AR magazine spring (one reason why even the 5.45 AK magazine looks long - the follower inside is maybe 1.5-1.75 inches tall and houses a massive spring), a super robust design (outside of cheap commercial copy-cat magazines), and a strong and solid magazine locking tab...you're ahead of the game when it comes to reliability. One advantage of the rock-n-lock is that you know 100% when a magazine is seated.

When you really study the design you'll begin to appreciate how incredibly well designed the rifle is.

In my own experience collecting weapons, increasingly I find that there's a lot more that went into just about every rifle design than I had conceived possible. With what I understand about the AK, AR, FAL, roller locking guns, etc now after owning and shooting them, I'm absolutely blown away by the ingenuity that went into these devices and their idiosyncrasies.

Backfire wrote:


One thing which AK has going for it is the magazine. AK magazines are sturdy and durable, and magazine release is idiot-proof. By contrast, 5.56mm STANAG magazine is flimsy and magazine release is finicky and prone to freezing etc.

AK mags are indestructible, but to be fair, newer STANAG mags like pmags are about as resilient as you could ask for. Took half a century to develop good polymer mags, but they got there. The aluminum mags were originally intended to be disposable, the problems resulted when everyone decided they wanted to reuse them

The disposable magazine idea has largely seemed to die out at this point.

The AK mags and locking system will survive insane amounts of abuse and environmental challenge, the STANAG pattern (particularly in the AR15 itself) lends to much faster and cleaner operation under stress, and you can see how each nation's priorities and methods shaped each weapon in the little things like that.

 MDSW wrote:
Having fired all three models (I own an AK74 using the slimmer 5.45x39mm round) I can agree with above posters on the range and accuracy of the M-16 version so far surpasses the AK variants there is no comparison. I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards. When shopping, I opted to buy the AK74 variant that uses the round closer to the M-16/NATO round. And I was happy I did, as the 74 version does have greater accuracy, simply due to the ballistics of the round, but only marginally.

The 47 was just so hugely massed produced for so many years in so many countries, it will be in use for a long time.

Correct me if im wrong but i recall most rounds fired during battle was mostly used for suppression rather than actual accurate shoot to kill. (something about bullets fired vs how many kill confirmed or whatever in ww2 iirc or perhaps more recent conflict) is actual accuracy considered valuable vs more men and less accurate guns covering a larger area. im not military and this be opinion.

 Desubot wrote:

 MDSW wrote:
Having fired all three models (I own an AK74 using the slimmer 5.45x39mm round) I can agree with above posters on the range and accuracy of the M-16 version so far surpasses the AK variants there is no comparison. I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards. When shopping, I opted to buy the AK74 variant that uses the round closer to the M-16/NATO round. And I was happy I did, as the 74 version does have greater accuracy, simply due to the ballistics of the round, but only marginally.

The 47 was just so hugely massed produced for so many years in so many countries, it will be in use for a long time.

Correct me if im wrong but i recall most rounds fired during battle was mostly used for suppression rather than actual accurate shoot to kill. (something about bullets fired vs how many kill confirmed or whatever in ww2 iirc or perhaps more recent conflict) is actual accuracy considered valuable vs more men and less accurate guns covering a larger area. im not military and this be opinion.

The first time these weapons clashed the general strategy was to fire more shots than your enemy. It is no mistake that the m-16 has a higher ROF than the AK-47 - while being lighter. Come on though - when you are designing a weapon you want it to be accurate even if it doesn't need to be. Because it gives your soldier confidence.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 MDSW wrote:
Having fired all three models (I own an AK74 using the slimmer 5.45x39mm round) I can agree with above posters on the range and accuracy of the M-16 version so far surpasses the AK variants there is no comparison. I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards. When shopping, I opted to buy the AK74 variant that uses the round closer to the M-16/NATO round. And I was happy I did, as the 74 version does have greater accuracy, simply due to the ballistics of the round, but only marginally.

The 47 was just so hugely massed produced for so many years in so many countries, it will be in use for a long time.

Correct me if im wrong but i recall most rounds fired during battle was mostly used for suppression rather than actual accurate shoot to kill. (something about bullets fired vs how many kill confirmed or whatever in ww2 iirc or perhaps more recent conflict) is actual accuracy considered valuable vs more men and less accurate guns covering a larger area. im not military and this be opinion.

The first time these weapons clashed the general strategy was to fire more shots than your enemy. It is no mistake that the m-16 has a higher ROF than the AK-47 - while being lighter. Come on though - when you are designing a weapon you want it to be accurate even if it doesn't need to be. Because it gives your soldier confidence.

Fair enough though out side of the good old US of A with its massive oil money, the m16 and whatever advantages you can buy is fine but the people that use the AK-47 i figure has less of a military budget, less trained, or operate in areas where a more complicated system would function poorly.

i guess thats my though on it. logistically economically and manufacturing comes into mind. what fairly modern military uses the AK47 as its main rifle?

The AK was intended to be used by masses of conscripts. Sling enough lead downrange and you will eventually hit something, especially if there's 100 other people pointing their guns in the same direction. Accuracy through volume.

Regardless, it has perfectly manageable accuracy within the confines of modern combat (if the fighter actually tries to aim), as covered multiple times in this thread.

Because they get upgraded over time. The original m16s were trash, the current service rifles that the US use though (m16a4?) are pretty reliable and effective

Its the optics that have really increased the lethality. Our earlier poster is right. Guys running AKs in local matches do very well if they have optics like the M-4 clone dudes.

Any Service rifle that can't be used up too and including 300m with ironsights only is a waste of the Material it is made out off!

The AK-47 is obsolete, as a front line rifle for a super power. As an upgraded, cheap, reliably, and readily available weapon, it's perfect for militias and warlords.

Certain designs just click, and then they are made in such huge numbers that the unit cost gets cheap enough that using anything else requires a significant cost. If you are a local warlord, why spend twice as much, or more, on something that's not all that much better than the AK-47?

 Desubot wrote:

 MDSW wrote:
Having fired all three models (I own an AK74 using the slimmer 5.45x39mm round) I can agree with above posters on the range and accuracy of the M-16 version so far surpasses the AK variants there is no comparison. I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards. When shopping, I opted to buy the AK74 variant that uses the round closer to the M-16/NATO round. And I was happy I did, as the 74 version does have greater accuracy, simply due to the ballistics of the round, but only marginally.

The 47 was just so hugely massed produced for so many years in so many countries, it will be in use for a long time.

Correct me if im wrong but i recall most rounds fired during battle was mostly used for suppression rather than actual accurate shoot to kill. (something about bullets fired vs how many kill confirmed or whatever in ww2 iirc or perhaps more recent conflict) is actual accuracy considered valuable vs more men and less accurate guns covering a larger area. im not military and this be opinion.

Absolutely right and suppression/covering fire was the highest percentage and mostly on an enemy you do not even have clear sights on. However, since I have never fired in live combat nor at an actual person, all I can say is there is tremendous satisfaction and confidence you have in your weapon when you can hit a target consistently the size of a basketball at 300 yards with only iron sights. Can't do that with many, if any, AK configurations, even with a scope. They are just too loose of a weapon, but there are some really well made ones out there may may get close. The lack of accuracy then becomes the large projectile that tends to tumble and drop much earlier than other round types.

Now, I will 100% admit that if you're doing a competitive shooting, or something similar, I think the AR is the better platform. The market is tremendous to make an AR into a long-distance tack driver or a serious race gun (to the tune of buying $3500-4000 rifles for just that purpose!). If I got into competiton shooting I wouldn't choose to run my AK, or an AK for that matter.

I can run drills along with my AR-toting buddies all day at the range, but at the razor's edge of performance (i.e. race guns) the AK is not anywhere near as lego-build as the AR. A lot of superb stuff has come out for the AK in the past 10 years but it's still a service rifle at its core.

Carbon fibre handguards, glass-breaking speedy triggers, special recoil buffers, extended mag-wells, etc. The AK can't match any of that (really) in the curent US market. Running a mil-spec type rifle, I'd say you can easily compete. This is where the AR shines, particularly as a commercial endeavor. It's plug-and-play nature is massive. The AK can't touch that.

But, as a fighting gun? 100% good to go, if you start with the right gun (see earlier posts)

This is my go-to rifle. Started life as an SLR-105 Bulgarian rifle (Arsenal import). Factory new. Now it's been...11 years and 14,000 rounds (on this rifle at least, more on others). That unfortunately includes numerous spans of 2-3 years where I was unable to shoot due to location/geography issues. It has a handful of "must have" add-ons to make it a competent and reliable fighting gun.





Here it is alongside the back-up rifle (recently painted and...almost never used unfortunately)

Those have monster bolts on them.

Yep, Tromix charging-handle add-on. A must for manipulating the bolt faster/easier.

Cool.

I dont think anyone has mentioned the fact that you can do the old call of duty magazine flick and reload with the AK too. cant do that with a new assault rifle.

I'm still amused at the amount of "it's an obsolete piece of trash" being spouted in this thread. Curious what rifles you guys were shooting that couldn't hit 300 yards easy and repeatable. It's worth pointing out that Spetsnaz units and some FSB, etc. units have kept the 7.62x39 in service because it's a better round close-up than the 5.45x39 (better barrier penetration, and generally puts people down better). Their units are generally mixed.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
So the Ak47 is 70 years old. That’s about as much time separating Waterloo and Rorkes Drift. That’s muskets to the Martini Henry rifle. How come despite our technology moving so much faster than it did during the 19th century has the AK not been rendered obsolete by more modern equivalents? Not just a “better rifle” like the M4, but to the musket/rifle comparison where it might be cheap and available but it’s just borderline useless against modern weapons.

Because the current role of the infantry rifle is the same: Apply firepower to things generally within a few hundred meters, which the AK can do if you bother to give it someone who knows how to aim. If your doctrine happens to be "Throw bullets at them to keep them in place until support removes them from the face of the earth" then it can absolutely serve. You can mount all the nice shiny lasers and red dots and flashlights and suppressors to them if you want, the stamped variants are easy to manufacture once tooling is in place, and if you don't like how the 7.62 starts nosediving after 250m you can always issue rifles in 5.45 or 5.56 instead.

What more do you want from an infantry rifle? Fighting across a room it's fine. Fighting from one treeline to another it's fine. Putting a round through that guy in the window down the road there it's fine. It's not so great shooting at something a half mile away on the other side of that valley, but an off the rack John Q M4 isn't (and if we are honest, most rifle shots aren't) either...at this point the best rifle in the world is a radio to someone with a plane that flies around with a lot of boom.

Take Iraq/Afghanistan: If our guys were the ones with the AKs, and the opposition had M16/M4s, we'd have still slammed them. Rifles are a small part of the machine, and a mature technology.

 Elbows wrote:
I'm still amused at the amount of "it's an obsolete piece of trash" being spouted in this thread. Curious what rifles you guys were shooting that couldn't hit 300 yards easy and repeatable. It's worth pointing out that Spetsnaz units and some FSB, etc. units have kept the 7.62x39 in service because it's a better round close-up than the 5.45x39 (better barrier penetration, and generally puts people down better). Their units are generally mixed.

With this i've heard that there's a proposal to reintroduce .30 rounds to military service (and in the US. the M14 got an upgrade to M21... Is this one designed to be quick firing sniper rifle for a generic fireteam? (and does it has full auto or burst mode as well?))

The NATO 7.62mm round never really left service.

In most western armies it's used for medium machine-guns, and also for sniper rifles, partly for the longer range and heavier impact.

If you read Black Horse Down, it mentions how the some of the guys with 5.56mm rifles envied the few sniper guy with 7.62mm rifles which had a much better knock-down effect on enemy troops.

(Of course that was in the early 1990s.)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The NATO 7.62mm round never really left service.

In most western armies it's used for medium machine-guns, and also for sniper rifles, partly for the longer range and heavier impact.

If you read Black Horse Down, it mentions how the some of the guys with 5.56mm rifles envied the few sniper guy with 7.62mm rifles which had a much better knock-down effect on enemy troops.

(Of course that was in the early 1990s.)

Black Hawk Down.

7.62x51 NATO is a great round. My personal favorite rifle is the AR-10. I'm not a very good shot but if I stay calm and focus on the fundamentals, I can sometimes put rounds in the same hole with it at 100 yards and can usually cloverleaf.

You can hunt any game in North America with it. It definitely has way, way more knockdown power; I have one of those AR500 steel target gongs - it sways a little when I hit it with 5.56 but .308 sometimes knocks it over.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What are the drawbacks of the AK that a modern rifle doesn't have? Is avoiding those drawbacks worth the difference in price?

None really aside from being slightly heavier. And nothing stop you from replacing the original wood stocks of an AK-47 with some polymer, which is pretty much exactly what the AK-15 is.

Modern small arms technology has really seen no meaningful advancement since WW2. A modern M4 is no more advanced than an AK-47, and in some crucial areas is actually a step backwards. Being lighter is of little use when the soldier keeps having to carry more and more gear on his back, and being accurate out to 800 meters is of zero use when 99.99% of all combat happens within 100 meters AND you've given up a lot of stopping power. Plus AKs are perfectly capable of hitting a man sized target at 800 meters, its just the difference between hitting an 8 inch group vs a 1 inch group. And the target is going to suffer more damage if he gets hit with a 123gr projectile vs a 70gr projectile, the latter of which is unlikely to penetrate ballistic vests at that long range.

This is why the US military is actually switching over to 6.5mm. 5.56 is simply too weak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MDSW wrote:
I was able to easily score and receive 'Sharpshooter' on the M-!6 in the military at 300 yards. However, when I was at the range with a friend's AK47, I could barely keep a consistent pattern at 100 yards.

Thats most certainly a problem with you and not the rifle. You take anybody and put them on an unfamiliar weapon and they won't do as well as they do on one they are trained on. A zeroed AK should easily hit a 300 meters target 100% of the time.

The inaccuracy of the AK myth is only true at extreme ranges, and usually involves soldiers dealing with some captured AKs that were made in a shoddy factory and weren't made to proper standards, ranges which do not have any bearing on actual combat. And even at those ranges, it will still hit the target.

This guy goes overs this a bit with this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVe7siEHXtc


For the small decrease in long range accuracy(so not a real downside), you gain much more stopping power and a more reliable firearm. A firearm that can tolerate a little abuse, a little dirt, is less prone to breaking, etc... M-16 and M4 family weapons have a definitive shelf life on many of their parts, they will wear out in the foreseeable future. AK parts are so robust that if properly maintained they will function indefinitely, with the only part that might wear out is the barrel rifling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:
The AK-47 is obsolete, as a front line rifle for a super power.

Nope. Russia just came out with the AK-15. Which is literally just an AK-47(or AKM if we're being proper) with polymer furniture and integral rails. Which is functionally no different from the original rifles.

Frankly, the US military would be better off if we switched to an AK platform rifle. The weapons would be cheaper than an M4 pattern rifle with similar gear and optics(the current standard issue rifle for the US military is very close to $2k), enough that the savings could be put into giving all of our troops level IV body armor as standard issue and would still leave money left over. Not to mention any money saved due to easier maintenance, fewer rifles suffering environmental damage, and being able to scavenge spare parts and ammo from pretty much any opponent we were fighting.

Given the modern state of US industry, the developed market of the AR15, and the traditionally more steel-consuming AK production, I don't think it would be cheaper to make than an AR in the US in this day and age.

AK's involve more labor and raw materials in construction than an AR15, and need to be made in huge quantities in big centralized operations to be cost effective. The AR needs more advanced materials requirements and developed industry in order to produce, but we're living in an age of $399 AR15's. A forged AR15 receiver can be had for as little as $40. WASR's are going for about $800 now. IIRC Colt was only getting over $1k for each M4 from Uncle Sam when they had the sole-source contract for them, the estimated price the US Army is paying from FN currently is ~$650. Russia is expecting to accept ~50k AK12's and AK15's over the next three years (at an unannounced cost), meanwhile the US civilian market has consumed how many millions of AR's in the last decade?

Likewise, the aftermarket for theAR15 is mind-bogglingly expansive. The AK's aftermarket, while big, is not quite as developed in the same way, and the AR15's lego-piece-like modularity fuels that aftermarket in a way no other platform has matched.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Frankly, the US military would be better off if we switched to an AK platform rifle. The weapons would be cheaper than an M4 pattern rifle with similar gear and optics(the current standard issue rifle for the US military is very close to $2k), enough that the savings could be put into giving all of our troops level IV body armor as standard issue and would still leave money left over. Not to mention any money saved due to easier maintenance, fewer rifles suffering environmental damage, and being able to scavenge spare parts and ammo from pretty much any opponent we were fighting.

But they already have piles of those M4s and older versions, plus spare parts, training, ammo. It's the same situation as for why others keep the AK - a switch now would be too expensive for too little gain.

 Grey Templar wrote:
This is why the US military is actually switching over to 6.5mm. 5.56 is simply too weak.

Switching over to 6.5 or 6.8 or whatever means changing out the barrel and bolt, which are pretty trivial. That's a considerably different undertaking than switching platforms to an AK style.

 Ouze wrote:
7.62x51 NATO is a great round. My personal favorite rifle is the AR-10. I'm not a very good shot but if I stay calm and focus on the fundamentals, I can sometimes put rounds in the same hole with it at 100 yards and can usually cloverleaf.

You can hunt any game in North America with it. It definitely has way, way more knockdown power; I have one of those AR500 steel target gongs - it sways a little when I hit it with 5.56 but .308 sometimes knocks it over.

Yeah - .308 AR-10 is a beast. Also my favorite rifle. At least because I don't have an M-14. Is there really any debate - M-14 or AK?

 Ouze wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
This is why the US military is actually switching over to 6.5mm. 5.56 is simply too weak.

Switching over to 6.5 or 6.8 or whatever means changing out the barrel and bolt, which are pretty trivial. That's a considerably different undertaking than switching platforms to an AK style.

Perhaps initially, and that initial hurdle is probably too much for anybody to accept. It would be cheaper over the long run though.

It is a shame that we got stuck with an inferior combat platform.

I hadn't heard of the 6.5mm calibre. It sounds interesting, though I notice it's a modern version of a 0.276 inch round proposed in the 1920s.

This really supports the argument that small arms development has come as far as possible without a major improvement in technology. The USA will have gone around the circle twice from 7.62mm to 0.276in to 0.30-06in, to 7.62mm, to 5.56mm, to 0.276in.