Inspired by another thread in GQ (How do our enemies stage ambushes without hitting anybody?), is the design of an AK-47 a trade-off between accuracy and reliability? Is there something about the cycling of the weapon that[ol]
[li]makes re-acquiring the target after the first shot difficult or at least more difficult than would be experienced using an M-16 versus[/li][li]making the weapon function under horrendous conditions with little or no maintenance?[/li][/ol]
It’s a tradeoff between accuracy, reliability, and ease and cost of manufacturing.
The AK-47 is intentionally made out of loosely fitting parts. This makes it easier and cheaper to produce since you don’t need high tolerance machining tools. The M-16 by comparison uses higher tolerance parts, which makes it more expensive to produce. This is an extremely important consideration when you are making enough to arm say the Russian army.
Those loose fitting parts also make the AK-47 much more tolerant of dirt and crud. The tighter fitting parts of the M-16 can’t tolerate as much dirt and crud in them.
Those loose fitting parts do make the AK-47 less accurate. It’s a horrible weapon if you want to try and pick off someone a few hundred yards away from you. The Soviets considered this acceptable, because most of the combat situations the AK-47 was designed for occur at significantly closer distances than that.
Completely unrelated to reliability and all of that, the AK-47 is designed in such a way that the recoil forces are off center, which tends to make the weapon rise and go off target in full auto mode. The M-16 is intentionally designed so that the recoil forces are straight back, which makes the weapon much less likely to wander. This is more due to the design of each weapon, and is not related at all to machining tolerances and the like.
The M-16’s tendency to jam is very much exaggerated, and the AK-47’s rugged reliability is similarly exaggerated.
There have been numerous threads around here comparing the two weapons. You can search for them if you want longer and more detailed explanations.
The dichotomy you’ll hear from every guy who thinks he’s an expert because he saw something on the history channel once is that AKs are reliable but wildly inaccurate, versus the M16 which is relatively unreliable but extremely accurate. This is almost entirely a false dichotomy.
There’s nothing inherent about the AK design that makes the rifle inaccurate. Most of the claims of inaccuracy come from the people who use it typically not being all that well trained in accuracy and the fact that a lot of them were made without much quality control in third world shitholes where the rifle wasn’t quite made up to spec.
There’s also an issue where people use accurized AR-15 rifles that are very good shooters but aren’t representative of the M4s and M16s actually out in the field.
To give perspective on what is viewed as “wildly inaccurate”, a well made AK type rifle will typically fire under 3 minutes of angle. A minute of angle translates roughly to one inch at one hundred yards - so you’d expect the AK to hit within 3 inches of its aim point at 100 yards, 6 inches at 200 yards. Compared to hunting rifles or sniper rifles, this is indeed inaccurate, but typical M16/M4 units will typically fire in the 2-3 MOA range. Not a huge difference.
The M16 sites are more conducive to accuracy with someone who is good with those style of sights though, but not by a large margin. The sight radius (distance between the front and rear site) is greater though, which does improve accuracy.
In terms of time of follow up shots - the original AK-47/AKM shot a heavier bullet than the M16 with heavier recoil, which would increase the amount of time spent getting back on target. The eastern bloc has used the AK-74 for over 30 years now though with a similar (5.45x39) round to the M16, so that’s not a signficant factor.
I’ve shot the AK-47 (not AKM, but an original vietnam bringback), AK-74, and M4 in full auto and while the AK-47 does have the most powerful recoil, the M4 is the least controllable rifle. The AK-47 and AK-74 give you very predictable straight up recoil that you can compensate for, but the M4 was all over the place - bouncing up, down, left, and right. The AK-74 was by far the best - very little recoil, very controllable.
As far as reliability - the AK action is very simple - the bolt carrier and gas piston are all one piece and the whole thing just moves back and forth. So long as a bullet can seat in the chamber, there aren’t really any points where it can fail barring being filled to the gils with mud or something. The AK’s reliability in my experience is not exaggerated, but the M16’s unreliability is - it’s been a pretty solid weapon for at least 20 years.
Thanks, folks.
I’ve never owned an AR-pattern rifle, but I did have an AK-clone back in the day. it was an Egyptian-made AWB-era piece with a stamped receiver. The fit and finish of the parts was approximate at best, but at a 100-yard rifle range with the stock open sight (looked like this) I could at least stay in the black circle; I’m guessing it was about a 10 or 12 inch spread. That’s not too bad for a relatively inexperienced shooter.
of course, the more annoying thing was that it ejected its brass about 30 feet to the side, and after a few rounds they “asked” me to move to the last booth 
Well yeah but US / Nato forces aren’t going up against Russian or other actual Government forces that have genuine factory made AK-47’s. They’re going up against militants that have whatever Khyber pass made guns they can get their hands on.
So the accuracy of AK-47 hand made knockoffs is a fair thing to talk about.
Funny thing, my ex-BF served with Soviet Spetznaz in Afghanistan, and this is exactly what he said. I don’t know jack about guns, period - have never been in the same room with an operational gun of any kind AFAIK - but I’d sure as hell take his word for it.
The OP specifically asked if there was something about the design that made it inaccurate.
Lots of the rifles circulating around shitholes were orignally made in decent weapons factories, but a lot of those places have cultures that discourage becoming a good shooter. In a lot of places it’s seen as somehow not macho to actually aim your weapon (maybe sort of like “gangsta” style pistol shooting in the US) and they just sort of fire off in the general direction of the enemy from the hip.
So the guns are often capable of much better shooting than the shooter - if you reversed the sides, the US soldiers with AKs would be outshooting the Afghanis with M-16s by a huge margin.
[Bolding added]
That’s exactly what I asked…
I owned an AK-47 for a while in Saudi. I believe it was originally made in Egypt and had a folding wire stock which was pretty ratty. I could hit center of mass on man-sized targets out to around 100 yards using the factory iron sights in semi-auto mode.
It never jammed or failed to fire but then I kept it clean and lubricated so I wouldn’t have expected that anyway. Shooting from the hip on full auto was great fun and looked impressive. Of course I couldn’t actually hit anything but it was fun to do once.
So yeah, I’d have to go with those saying the gunner is more important than the gun.
Regards
Testy
[nah, i take it back.]
Or if you’re arming a third-world hole with very limited budget.
But if the AK-47 is cheaper and (at least somewhat) more robust than the M16, and very nearly as accurate, why doesn’t the US use the AK-47, too, or something similar to it?
Pride - it would be very unusual to adopt the weapons of your enemy. And institutional stubbornness towards adopting any new weapon. Part of this is practical - retraining and the expense of equipping millions of new rifles.
We’ve had a lot of replacements for the M16 available for quite a few years - the G36 or even M416 if you wanted to keep the same training with a better rifle. There’s not much reason to stick with the M16/M4 except that it’s easy, they’re already there, and everyone knows how to use them.
by the late 40s, the US was scouting for a weapon that could possibly replace all of the following: the BAR, the garand, the m-1 carbine, and the m-3 subgun. if the US threw away everything in stock and opted for an entirely new weapon, say the AK, it would not have fitted with the original purpose (somewhat better than the carbine and the grease gun, poor compared with the garand and the BAR.) ergo, the m-14. note that the m-14’s cartridge is the 30-06 cut down by half an inch.
however, even as the 7.62mm round and the m-14 were coming out, research (WW1 & 2 data) already showed a number of things: engagements happen at short range, there weren’t that many hits through aimed fire (!) that a lot of hits tended to be random shots (!!) and that the belief that whoever fired more rounds was the likely winner was true (!!!) so research was made for smaller, lighter rounds that can be fired full-auto from a hand-held weapon. enter the 5.56mm round.
The primary difference between the Kalashnikov and the M-16 is the actuating mechanism. The Kalashnikov uses what’s called a “long stroke gas piston”, while the M-16 uses a “direct impingement” gas system. You can go on wikipedia to see the exact differences between the 2 but basically the Kalashnikov action cycles more reliably, and the weapon is laid out such that all the moving parts are forward of the pistol grip, which makes it trivial to produce the rifle with a folding stock, a useful feature for, say, people who get in and out of cramped vehicles a lot. Downside is that the moving parts are heaver and will disturb the aim of the shooter with more force, and putting all the moving parts forward of the pistol grip excaberated this - if you’re trying to hold something still and prevent it from moving, it’s easier to hold it close to your body than with your arms outstretched.
The M-16’s cycle is designed for exactly the opposite purpose. The actuating assembly is much lighter and the action is spread out with a buffer spring that goes into the stock. The result is that the recoil is much lighter and there is much less disturbance to the shooter with each shot, however it is not possible to make a folding stock, and the gas system will dump carbon deposits into the action with every discharge. Eventually the carbon will foul the action enough that the weapon jams. Note that this has nothing to do with mud or sand or abuse, the weapon will have this problem even if it never leaves the bench, simply firing enough rounds is sufficient.
In technical terms, you could have a M-16 pattern rifle that is actuated by a gas piston instead. Such a thing (the HK416) is already in use the the US armed forces.
If you are asking why the US generally issues one or the other type of weapon, any kind of military procurment is essentially a political contest to see which defence contractor has the deepest campaign contribution pockets. The Israelis for a while produced and used the Galil, a rifle that was similar in most respects to the Kalashnikov. Eventually they switched to the M-16 pattern rifle for simple enough reasons - it’s American, and American military aid to Israel means you get it for free(cheaper, lowest bidder, whatever you want to call it). In every other respect it’s good enough for government work. In the big scheme of things, rifles just aren’t that important compared to F-15s or missile submarines.
Thank you Throatwarbler Mangrove. That was quite comprehensive and understandable.
As a Marine in Vietnam I agree with this. It didn’t take me long once I got to Vietnam to realize our, the grunts that is, biggest single function was to roam around until we found/were found by some of the enemy. Once found we could put out many more rounds per man than they could. This enabled us to hold them where they were until artillary or air power could get on target and pound the poo out of them. The reality of the thing is that once everyone is on the ground if there’s any kind of grass or brush you’re not going to hit squat, spray and pray.
Which brings me to another thing that should be in the ambust thread. The VC/NVA didn’t take long to figure this out either. Almost all fire fights took place under 50 yards or over 250 yards. By being very close we couldn’t use our biggest assets. If they were further out than 250 yards it was hard to pin them down so they could slip off fairly easily.
I totally disagree. You don’t control a piece of land until you can park a 19 year old with a rifle on top of it.
Chronos, the last time I know of that a military adopted the weapon of an enemy was when the Romans switched to the Gladius Hispaniensis. Organized military, that is. I don’t count Amerinds dumping their bows for repeating rifles.
In part, because the US has very different philosophies in terms of weapon system acquisition; the Soviets (and the Chinese, and most of the rest of the world) favor weapon systems that can be deployed cheaply, en masse, and with limited training. The United States favors systems that are more complex, have (ostensibly) greater capability, and often require a higher standard of training. This cannot be overstated; the difference in philosophy of investing in training goes to the core of acquisition strategy.
It is worthwhile to note that while Soviet and Chinese armies are largely conscript even at the non-commissioned officer (NCO) level, the United States, Great Britain, and other nations of Western Europe have armies that have a corps of professional NCOs who serve as middle management and supervisory positions, and thus serve to assure continuity in training. Whereas in the US military it would be exceedingly rare to see an lieutenant or captain working on a generator or manning a radio (in the view of cynical NCOs most junior officers can’t be trusted to go to the bathroom alone) in the former Soviet Army the officers were often the only ones trained to do semi-skilled or skilled labor of any kind. So simple and easy to service has trumped capable but complex, sometimes for the better.
A few other points of note:
The AR-15 pattern rifle uses direct impingement, as previously mentioned. This makes the rifle mechanically less complex, but also introduces contamination into the action. This, plus the tight tolerances and the nasty tendency for the AR-15 aluminum receiver to heat up, resulted in more frequent malfunctions. This is particularly true in sandy desert environments, as has been discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The HK416 modifications (short stroke piston, more open tolerances on the upper receiver) make it substantially more reliable, so it isn’t that the entire design of the gun is poor, just the particular features that allow contamination and heating. On the other hand, the weapon is relatively easy to break down and clean, more accurate out of the box than the average infantryman is able to demonstrate, lightweight, modular, and has a decent trigger pull even in the service variants. (People who complain about the action not fully closing on reload need to learn how to use the forward assist.)
The AK-47 will certainly tolerate less frequent maintenance, but at some point enough sand and grit will cause it to jam. It has a poor trigger pull, greater weight, the iron sights are indifferent at best, and despite its reputation for robustness it can’t really take the same amount of physical abuse as, say, an FN-FAL or a H&K G3, so its robustness is somewhat overstated.
To directly address the question of the o.p., most of the people bearing the AK-47 or derivatives in anger barely know one end of the gun from the other and are doing well not to shoot the guy next to them. You could put a SIG Stg-57 in their hands and they wouldn’t shoot any better.
Stranger
Have you ever met or spoken to an actual Chinese person before? Assuming you are talking about the People’s Liberation Army, it has always been a volunteer force and never used conscription. Gaining admittance to the army is actually quite difficult and the requirements are fairly strict.
Taiwan/Republic of China does have a huge conscript army.
Most western European countries including Britain primarily use rifles that use either a gas piston mechanism or delayed blowback (G3, FAMAS). The few small countries that use M-16 pattern rifles(Denmark, Holland) are the exception. Everything else you talk about is largely cosmetic. Whatever sights you can fit on an M16 you can also fit on a Kalashnikov, same with triggers, and the adoption of the awful 3 round burst trigger by the US military would seem to indicate that this is not such an important thing for Americans as you suggest.