Yeah, the Blackout is an interesting offering. If I were way more into suppressors and such I'd have an upper in that caliber in the collection in short order.

Not only just switching barrels, just switch mags attach a silencer, and you have a subsonic silenced weapon. And if you forgot to take off the silencer when you went back to or accidentally put in a mag of supersonic ammo you would not have a catastrophic problem just a slightly embarrassing one (that is if anyone notices).

I would like to see the 6mm, though though .300 black out is cool too, if not a little more veritable.

As for this topic, well....yep, I chose the AR-15/M-16/M-4 platform. Don't mean to sound jingoistic in any way, but it's what I'm comfortable with. Plus, it's come a long way since the teething problems the original models had back in the day. As for as assault rifles go it's a very accurate firearm, easy to handle and very ergonomic, and the biggest plus being it's such a modular platform. The design of the upper and lower receiver has allowed it to be easily adapted to a whole slew of various calibers and barrel lengths, and the Picatinny rail system allows it be tricked out in whatever configuration you want with all the various accessories they have these days. The number and various type of accessories that can be mounted on the platform these days are insane to say the least, which I'm sure some members here can attest to.

Again, depending on the nationality of the said character, practically any assault rifle would do though I have some qualms about the reliability of the Colt family. For a Finnish character it would be the m/62 or m/95, depending on his unit of service. And in case of m/95, probably one equiped with some kind of an optic and the cheekplate installable on the folding stock.

For a mercenary character the Israeli Tavor might be cool...

First off I went with the AR Platform. Have used it in real life, and trust it. I have had the opportunity to use the AK, and do not trust my life to it, the rest I have no first hand experience with. I did serve around some Brits who had good things to say about there rifle (no idea what A version it was).

One more saying it depends on the rifle. I have used ones that no one could get to zero, even in a bench rest it patterned like a shotgun. I have never seen one that was accurate, but have seen lots that are OK, and many that just flat out suck.

I have to say you must be smoking crack or something, I have first hand experience going through way more than 2 magazines. I carried 16 magazines loaded to 27 rounds, there was one time I ran dry and had to reload from the supplies in the truck, guess how many jams I had? Zero, guess how many jams the team had, Zero and they fired about as many rounds as I did.

Don't worry, I used an R604 M16(no "A") in 1995, it was 10 years older than I was and had serial number 54,XXX.

It's Alive!
 

Based on the new responses on the Favorite APC/IFV thread, I thought a bit of thread necromancy might be in order.

I've used both the M16 and AK-47 in real life -- and the winner is the AK-47. Yes, it's heavy, and a decent lot of ammunition is beastly heavy, but it works. I haven't had extensive real-life use of an AK, but you can shoot and shoot, throw it around, use it as a baseball bat club, and it keeps going without a hiccup. and it's round is guaranteed a fight-ending wound or a kill.

The M16 is light and easy to tote around, and you can carry a s---load of ammo for it. And you'll need it, because you'll need at least a 3-round burst or sterling marksmanship to bring an enemy down. And then, the bane of existence in my experience with the M16 -- extraction failure. Rarely did I go through more than 3 magazines without one. Often, it was only one. Then you find yourself clearing your chamber under fire, discarding the magazine (because it was sometimes the culprit) ans then doing a SPORTS routine.

Have to agree with your assessment of the M16 - I had similar experience with them myself. Every. Single. One.

I have to say that your experiences are totally different from mine. I spent about five years is Iraq using M16/M4's of one type or another. But most of that time I was working OGA (Other Government Agency) this just means that I was working for a different agency than the one I belonged to (State department when I was Army in this case). I had the opportunity to work with the locals a lot, and we (the US government) would give them brand new from the factory firearms, within a month we got a fair number of them back as they were no longer working. What were those firearms you ask? They were AK-47's (not sure who made them but think it was a former block) and Glock 19's. One of the things that I got tasked with was figuring out what went wrong, with the Glocks we found that it was due to poor ammo, they had a fair amount of bad ammo that produced squib loads, the way they cleared them was to fire another round. So on one had it shows that the Glocks were very tough firearms as they did not blow up, they just had bulges in the barrels that would lock the slide open. As for the AK, we have no idea what they did. We could not even get the slide to open with a hammer it was as if it was welded in place. Could not find anything out of the normal with the ammo it was not the best quality, but not the worst I have seen, it did have corrosive primers, but not that out there. They did not do the best maintenance, but much better than what "they" (being the uber fans) say is all that is required, I have also seen troops do worse maintenance on there M16 and they still worked just fine. Then when you add in the lack of accuracy or maybe better to say lack of consistency. What I mean by this is when doing test shooting some of them shot patterns, and others were almost OK, none were what I would call good, best were about 2 to 3 MOA, worst I do not have any idea as not all rounds were on the paper from a bench rest at 25 feet (worst I have ever seen, so not saying it is typical of them).

I have a lot of experience with the M16/AR over the past 30 years. I have to say that one of the greatest disservices done to this weapon has been the military’s notion that the weapon has to be dry. This has done more to perpetuate the myth that it is unreliable than anything else. The M16 will run dirty all day as long as it is properly lubricated. The guys at EAG ran an AR for over 31k rounds with one cleaning back in 2012 https://www.slip2000.com/blog/s-w-a-...ine-filthy-14/ , since then the test has been replicated time and again by other folks. The military’s obsession with dry/clean weapons has probably caused more problems with reliability than any design or manufacturing mistake.

The wetter the better. The M16 will absolutely run dirty, but not dry.

Draw
 

It's well documented that the early M-16, relatively advanced compared to its contemporaries, was not ready for the battlefield (much like the Panther tank in WW2). By the 1980s, most of the kinks were ironed out. That's not to say that the later versions of the M-16/AR-15 are perfect, but there's a reason (besides marketing) that AR-15 "black rifles" are the most popular "assault weapons" on the US civilian market, and that military versions are used by armed forces around the world.

There are entire books and websites devoted to the Great AK-47 v. M-16 debate.

The arguments can be boiled down to:

Recoil/Accuracy: M16 (this is why the AK74 was created)
Reliability: AK (this is why newer assault rifles don't use Stoner's direct impingement gas system and instead use a variation of the AK's piston-driven system)
Weight (of weapon & ammo): M16 (also why the AK74 was created)
Ease of Maintenance: AK
Range: M16
Stopping Power: AK
Ergonomics: M16 (this is why the HK416 and SIG 716 & MCX pretty much copy everything about the M4 other than its operation)
Durability: AK

So it's pretty much a push, and the "winner" depends on what factors the individual shooter values more.

Also when supply wants zero carbon on the weapon. It has been found to work better with a bit of carbon on. I have also seen more weapons damaged/destroyed by troops trying to get the last speck of carbon off so that supply will accept it.

Recoil/Accuracy: M16 (this is why the AK74 was created)
This may be why it (the AK74) was created, and it is much more accurate than the AK47, if you go off of the information out there it could be argued that it is more accurate than the M16, but that is a misnomer if you ask me. The reason for this is how they determine accuracy. They use Circular error probable, and we use MOA (Minutes of angle). If you try to convert the information given about the AK74 you end up with about 3.9 MOA (compared to the 5.9 MOA for the AK47), where the M16A2 has an average of 4.2 MOA. But this is misleading as for the AK74 (AK47 as well) half the rounds will be outside this circle, but every round from the M16 will be inside, with most rifles being between 1 to 3 MOA.

Reliability: AK (this is why newer assault rifles don't use Stoner's direct impingement gas system and instead use a variation of the AK's piston-driven system)
I am not going to get into this this except to say that there is some out there who come down on both sides of how reliable the direct impingement system is or is not. Also in my first hand experience the M16 (not saying it is the direct impingement) was much more reliable in combat than the AK47, but others have different experiences.

Weight (of weapon & ammo): M16 (also why the AK74 was created)
Weights are with out magazine, M16 6.37lbs (2.89kg), AK47 7.7lbs (3.47kg), AK74 6.8lbs (3.07kg). Magazine weights for a fully loaded 30rd magazine are .99lb (.45kg) for M16, between 1.6 to 2lbs (.74 to .92kg) for AK47, and 1.215lb (.551kg) for AK74.

Ease of Maintenance: AK
For this I do not know what the expected level of operator maintenance is for the AK, but will say that it is easier to field strip, not that the M16 is difficult, the biggest issue I see for the M16 is it does have some small parts that could be lost in the dark or what not.

Range: M16
I think that this has a lot to do with accuracy, as it is difficult to hit a target if the bullet is off by more then the size of the target at that range.

Stopping Power: AK
At the barrel, The AK47 has 1502ft/lb (2036 J), the AK74 has 979ft/lb (1328 J), and the M16 1302ft/lb (1764 J). So the AK47 is the winner here, but the AK74 is in last place, so I would not say AK, as you are bouncing between AK47 and AK74. The AK47 also has the best penetration.

Ergonomics: M16 (this is why the HK416 and SIG 716 & MCX pretty much copy everything about the M4 other than its operation)
This is one more thing that I am not going to get into, as I have never carried the AK for extended periods of time. I have used it for training and teaching others, for this is was fine, but I have thousands of hours on the M16 so not sure it is better ergonomics or just more familiarity.

Durability: AK
This is the same as the reliability.

I based this off of much anecdotal evidence. I once saw a video of a rusted AKM found in a hole in the ground in Mozambique. It was covered in rust. The finder poured some motor oil over it and was able to fire it. I've never seen or heard of a similar feat with an M16.

Also, the AK is reputed to require less frequent cleaning. This, I think, makes maintaining it easier.

I don't like field stripping my AR-15. As you pointed out, too many little parts. The AK-47/AKM has fewer parts. This make maintenance easier too.

I only mentioned the development of the AK74. It wasn't really included in the comparison, but thanks for including it in your assessment.

One of the biggest knocks on the ergonomics of the AK series is the safety/selector switch mounted on the right side of the receiver. It can't be operated without removing one hand- usually the right hand (for most, the dominant/shooting hand)- from the weapon. This is a major design flaw.

It's also reputedly quite loud. I've read numerous accounts of LRRPs and SOG recon teams in Vietnam being tipped off to an impending ambush by the loud CLACK of AKs being taken off safe.

To an extent, but not really. I was thinking more of what would happen if one tried to butt-stroke an enemy. The M16's plastic stock is a lot less sturdy than most models of AK-47/AKM, many of which have a metal buttplate in addition to a wood butt. The M16's foregrip is less sturdy as well.

On the direct impingement system: An author for Small Arms Review said it well: they are the only weapons that throw up in their own mouths when they fire.

All the Assault Rifles have the same stats. So it doesn't matter which one you choose.

I have very few experience, but felt comfortable with my G3 battle rifle.

Look Good, Feel Good
 

In terms of game mechanics, you're right, more or less. But T2k is also theater of the mind, and, for some players, at least, it matters what weapon they imagine their PC wielding. If I'm going to daydream about using an assault rifle, I want it to look cool. :cool:

It's not in the poll, but I like the looks of the Swedish AK-5.

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i went with AR. its all about ammo and spare parts for me. it is very hard to reload russian war ammo. not saying that it cann't be done only that it is harder.

I have also seen videos of things like this, but my real world experience with AK's is very different. Yes they may require less frequent cleaning but the AR is not one that needs near as much cleaning as many say. I spent on average about 5 minutes when we came back from a patrol cleaning my rifle, over the almost two year deployment never once had any malfunctions of any kind. On my second and third deployments where I was working with the locals they had there AK's and at least when we were around they did maintenance, they had all sorts of issues from failure to fire up to the bolts seized up so much that could not even get them open with a hammer.

...



If you butt-stroke an enemy with an AR nothing happens to the rifle, as they are not plastic. They are not as weak as people make them out to be. The fore-grip are also very sturdy, now yes there are after market ones that are very weak and my guess is that is where the misinformation about service weapons comes from. We used ours to beat down doors, and all sorts of other stuff with none breaking from that. We did have one rifle break, but that was when the soldier who's rifle it was leaned it against the truck tire, walked off to do something and the truck moved driving over it, this would have also broken a wooden stocked rifle (it was also the barrel that was bent, not the "plastic' that broke). Now how does it compare to the AK's wooden butt stock I can not say for sure as I have never used an AK to butt stroke someone, I do know that wood stocks have issues with accuracy based on the humidity. Last thought on the strength issue is if it was a issue why would the US Army be switching its M14/21's to synthetic stocks (the EBR)?

I respect your personal experiences, CDAT, and my intent is not to dismiss it or question your integrity but, excepting your anecdotes, everything I've seen, heard, or read on the topic has been pretty adamant that the AK-47/AKM is a sturdier weapon (i.e. can handle more wear and tear and hard use, and less routine maintenance) than the M16. Of course, even if that's true, that doesn't necessarily mean that the AK is a better overall weapon than the M16.

What material are M16A1/A2 buttstocks made out of?

I assume weight is a big factor in that decision, and also the age and wear of the original wooden furniture. I also assume that synthetic materials are sturdier now than they were in the mid-1960s.

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I have thought about this one for quite a while and I think I would use the assault rifle with the best chance of "battlefield pickup" for my area of operations. I know the battlefield is in flux and there is a good chance that even friendlies are armed with opfor weapons and the opfor having familiar weapons.
So, in a behind enemy lines campaign, I would opt for the opfor assault rifle, so I can get spares easily and pickup ammo and magazines off the dead and prisoners. The added plus is that I would make a scout come closer to positively identify me as an enemy.
I would keep my issue weapon and magazines as well, so long as i can leave it in a safe place suitabily disabled so prying eyes and hands don't make a "five finger discount" purchase at my expense. If my party has a vehicle, this is a no brainer. This will keep my options open for its use should a supply of ammunition be located.

In game terms, I went with the AK-47/AKM. In both T2k and M2k I've always seen them as common "found" weapons. The Pact flooded the second and third world with them for decades. The proliferation of the AR platform (to the best of my knowledge) in the real world is an artifact of the fall of the iron curtain.

I think the mix of WP and NATO equipment gives a good feel for the setting. After a couple years of cantonment and pulling in stragglers even nominally NATO units aren't going to have homogenous load outs. Even if characters have their originally issued weapons they've likely, in my view, to have picked up AKs just to make scrounging for parts and ammo easier.

My philosophy is always reduced to the following criteria:

Firstly, "will it let me down at a crucial moment?"

Secondly "is there plenty of ammunition for it?"

I usually go for the AK-74 variants in Euro campaigns as there's buckets of ammo and magazines, it's rock solid and also it doesn't draw undue sniper attention. Really, if I'm some chump holding what everyone's holding and there's a guy with a Gucci gun next to me they're going to whack him first. Similarly if I was to play in the USA it'd be an M16.

I have a friend in the ADF and he is not a fan of the AUG/F88 because he finds it's difficult to shoulder with his body armour on. He prefers conventional rifles with a sliding stock so he can adjust it.

I agree that the stories out there are about how the AK can be totally abused and still work, and the AR if any dust gets in it, it will jam. However I think that the AK and the AR are much more in the middle. I think it was a forgotten weapon video (or maybe the link was from it, do not remember) where they took both a AR and AK did the same dirt and mud test on them on video. The AR was the one that worked better. (just looked it up it is inrangeTV the AR test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAneTFiz5WU and the AK test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX73uXs3xGU) There is also the video by Brandon Herrera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htkYVB4LaDM) who is about the biggest AK fan that I know of. Based on those videos, and what I have seen in real life both from others using them and using them myself I think that the reliability of the AK is vastly overblown, same as the AR being a jam o'matic, having said that the biggest advantage I see for the AK over the AR is if something needs fixed in a third world good luck for the AR, but the AK I can see you making parts in a back yard garage. Heck I saw quite a few AK, and Mosien who had broken stocks that were just nailed back together, not something that you can do with an AR.

I do not know the exact thing that they are made out of, some fiber reinforced polymer. Also this is for GI ones, not the after market (some are good I am sure, but other are just cheap plastic) I was in a LEO AR armorers class and the Colt instructor noticed one of the guys in the class had after market parts, so he asked if he could use one of the forgrips (told him that they would likely be destroyed) and was able to bend them with his arms snapping it in half, he then let the class try to do the same with the GI issue ones, no one was able to even bend them. My understanding is that the for grips and the butt stock are made out of the same, with the butt stock also being filled (where not intended to be empty for the cleaning kit).

My understanding is that it is because of the stiffness and that they do not swell with the moisture in the air, weight was not noticeable (we had some of both wood and synthetic) we did the same things with both.

Now I am not anti-AK, I think that the AK is just a fine weapon, I am pro AR on the other hand and feel that it is a better overall firearm. Having said that both are tools, both were out, the AK will be easier to rebuild in a TW2k type world, I think that the AR will last longer before it is needed, but this could be my bias so take it for what it it worth.

M16EZ
 

This doesn’t really fit here… but doesn’t warrant its own thread either.



Ok… Which one of you is building an M16EZ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroAR/com...upper_is_done/

I hope that's not one of those "Ghost Guns...":mad:

Are any of these guys being legal and registering their short-barreled rifles?

Saints Stoner and Sullivan guide us
 

AR-15 variants for service rifles, hands down.

Manual of arms is faster than a raped ape. Runs better in mud than an AK. Runs even better if you keep 'er wet, even in the desert (the "keep your weapon dry" thing is a sure fire way to have it malfunctioning; environmental contaminants can't seize if they're a liquid), and you can slap just about anything on the platform in any configuration you wish and still have a lighter rifle than the next competitor, and you can trivially upgrade or modify essentially any single part of the rifle imaginable.

Need a rifle the size of an MP5? Mk18 has you covered. Need to reach out and touch someone at 800? Mk12 and 90-grain SMK's got it. Want to convert between the two in a private setup? You're two takedown pins and 15 seconds away from a room sweeper to a precision rifle. More exotic workups are easily possible; that same rifle can serve as a 9mm subgun to a .50BMG bolt-action, magazine-fed rifle or anything in between, and with a given lower, fire anything that fits within the 5.56 action length, and if you're not too snooty about upsizing, you've got the AR-10 and SR-25 families of design following essentially the same pattern.

Lefties do fine, too. No proprietary parts switching (which aren't issued along with service rifles most of the time, anyway), no worries about having to physically pull your magazine free if retention isn't required but speed is, allowing you to shortcut the process of gassing your weapon back up, no brass to fly in your face if you're transitioning shoulders (and you will constantly be transitioning shoulders).

With over 500 companies manufacturing parts for the things, and thousands that could if needed, they're better situated than any other country's service rifle for emergency wartime production, especially considering modern design and fabrication methodology for cutting aluminum billet and punching barrel blanks, and the existing aftermarket is probably the richest for any rifle platform in existence. These days, you can turn an AR-15 cheaper and faster than you can most extant AKs.

There's no one rifle that can do everything, but the AR-15 - especially in its modern incarnations - probably comes the closest.

If I were a trifling man, I could also mention that I've never been able to ignore that all these countries with indig service rifles (especially bullpups) tend to have their special operations forces almost universally using some flavor of AR-15 as well.

For the business end of things, an AR-15 is - within most common shootout distances - slinging a round that is going to cause considerably more tissue damage than a 7.62x39, as well, with lighter recoil, faster follow-up on the target, and on a trajectory that isn't like firing a rock from a slingshot.

Ah, the classic AR v. AK debate continues!

I'm curious as to your sources for this claim. Everything I've read or seen on this particular subject says the exact opposite.

The AK-47 series is legendary for its robustness and ability to operate reliably even when filthy. I once saw a video of South African special forces recovering an AK that had been buried for years in a guerilla cache in Mozambique. They literally dumped a can of motor oil over it (not even close to a proper cleaning), and then immediately fired off a 30-round magazine on full auto with no problems. I've never seen an M-16 do that.

The early M-16 had a deadly reputation of jamming under adverse conditions. In Vietnam, hundreds of US soldiers and Marines were KIA when their first-gen G.I. M-16s jammed during firefights. To be fair, this was corrected in subsequent versions but, AFAIK the AK still operates more reliably under adverse conditions (mud, sand, water, etc.) than the AR-15.

True, but these days, those AR "flavors" are more-often-than not look-alikes rifles like the HK416, which uses a different, more reliable operating system. It looks like an AR-15 but, ironically, its innards are more similar to those of the AK.

The 5.56mm round performs really well in ballistics tests, but it falls short of 7.62x39mm when it comes to penetrating anything tougher than soft tissue. I've also read multiple battlefield reports of the 5.56mm round lacking "stopping power", and of human targets of fighting through multiple 5.56mm round hits.

That all said, what I've read/seen on the subject definitely confirms that the ergonomics, operating controls, recoil, accuracy, mod-ability, and ammo weight of the AR-15 is superior to the AK and its variants.

-

Miller and Dorchester's 95 Theses
 

Mostly from running both platforms in mud comps and on the job for the past 20 years. There's modern mud tests that bear this out, though. Outside of "legendary" claims and lingering fuddlore regarding the original production model's faults in Vietnam, essentially anything that shuts an AR-15 down is going to shut down an AK as well. About the only thing they do better - assuming both weapons are well-lubricated - is run better in deep freeze conditions, and if your AR isn't running in Bridgeport at 12,000 feet, well, you're using the wrong lubricant.

If you're not running the thing dripping, put plainly, you're doing it wrong. CLP is cheap, and there's not a thing in the world will seize on if you've got the operating system essentially swimming. Ran the thing through the Dynamic Assault Course and a couple dozen critical incident courses over the years, and through most competition, and whether shooting compromised or flat range, she runnin', as long as you keep the thing wet.

As far as the actual mechanics of it, the popular claim that an AK runs better because of "loose tolerances" is bunk. That's why the thing ingests so much environmental contamination, and why you can get so much large particulate in the chamber and even down into your magazine, even if the weapon is loaded. If your safety isn't on, the side of your weapon is open and able to ingest. Like, not just moisture, or water with particulate in it, but talking chunks, and straight into your operating system. The bolt also doesn't self-clear the way an AR does, blowing gas though the starboard side of the bolt carrier group; you're generating a high pressure environment that exits through the path of least resistance with every shot, and you can literally see it blowing mud out of the ejection port during the firing cycle. Whole thing stays more or less closed off, as well, whether the ejection port cover is open or not (better to keep it closed after charging a round anyway).

Your anecdote about dumping a can of motor oil into and onto a weapon isn't surprising at all. Motor oil, as it turns out, and as you may imagine, is an utterly fantastic lubricant, and as I've attempted to make clear, if a weapon is well-lubed, it'll generally fire, no matter the make or model, so long as it's not got a gross physical stoppage already in play that requires clearing to allow cycling the operating system.

As to the early M16 part, I couldn't really tell you other than agree with the reports, but we're not really talking about early M16s with jacked up operating and maintenance instructions, poor barrel finishing, and engineered failures.

As to the variant operating system, it's more reliable than the in-line internal gas piston of traditional ARs in certain circumstances, but it's not an across-the-board thing, and there are trade-offs with it, as there are with any design choice in a firearm; there ain't no such thing as a free lunch in any engineering field, and internal gas piston vs. an offset short stroke is no different. Also, for what it's worth, the system you're referring to shares little with an AK, as it's derived directly from G36's system in function, which itself is derived from the AR-18; the Germans basically re-skinned a Stoner design for their own operating system, and later put it back into an AR-15 form factor. There's a fairly straightforward lineage to this. As to the 416 mention, prior to their rolling that out, most of the ARs in use by the special operations forces mentioned were simply product improved Colt designs from licensed manufacturers, and still used the in-line internal gas piston.

For terminal performance, yeah, 7.62x39 knocks through a lot of light cover better, but you get better AP performance through body armor (especially more modern designs, as 7.62x39 designers failed to keep up with Western ceramics) with the tungsten core munitions at the higher velocities that the 5.56 cartridge generates, even out of M4-length barrels, compared to the AK. If you're sitting there trading rounds with someone through cover, though, few hundred yards away, where this sort of thing is usually taking place, you're doing yourself a disservice by sitting there and not making use of the rest of the weapons in your squad to fix, flank, and tenderly caress that hostile element that's engaging you. For what it's worth, though, you can wallbang just fine with 5.56 though most residential structures. If you're trying to sit there and wallow out a block wall, you're not going to achieve that with either rifle, unless you've got a firing squad. And generally speaking, if you're behind cover that I can't penetrate with my rifle, but COULD penetrate with a 7.62 round, I'm going to set your corpse on fire with a copper jet from an HEDP round or slamming a LAW into you, cuz it's no skin off my ass, and I brought three, because only an idiot fights fair.

There's no perfect weapon, again, and with any of them, you're working in other areas to counter shortcomings. ARs simply don't require a multitude of sacrifices.

As to the humans fighting through multiple 5.56 round hits, there's nothing surprising about that. You see similar with many other cartridges, all the way up to .300 WinMag. Ugly truth of it is that any hit not in the ten ring is gonna be a long an ugly death if you're looking at torso hits. If you don't blow the heart and lungs out, it's gonna take an uncomfortable amount of time for your target to die, period. Sometimes you see someone go down quickly from the traumatic psychological shock of the event, but it's unpredictable and absolutely cannot be counted on, even if you slammed a 7.62x51mm round into their chest. You can blow someone's heart and both lungs out with a hit, and worst case scenario, they've still got about 8 seconds on their feet they can kill you with. That's why you fire until your target is hamburger, no matter what system you're running. If you don't get a good spinal, or blow out the heart and lungs, or get lucky and tag someone in the domepiece, you're going to have to shoot them more. There's a reason it's a good idea to get a machine gun into a house, and it's not just cuz of fire superiority. 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, doesn't matter. If you can shoot your target half a dozen times and destroy every functional organ they have, they're going to bleed out and go down from hypovolemic shock that much quicker, and you've got more of a chance of clipping the strings with a good spinal hit with every shot that nails them, or blowing out the pelvis, or getting a similarly good structural hit that physically prevents the human body from working the way it's supposed to.

Stopping power in and of itself is a literally non-existent concept born largely out of fuddlore and the operators of a weapon not understanding the actual principles of what's taking place when they smoke someone, and weighing their perceptions of a fictional understanding of how gunfire kills people against an uncompromising reality of what happens when a bullet hits an organism that is wired from the ground up to stay alive until the brain shuts down from lack of oxygen and that is fully capable of killing you even after lethal injury unless you completely disassemble it or clip the strings.

Also, sorry for the whole post quote. I haven't used forum markup for years and am utterly terrible at it, and was unsure of how badly I'd bork the formatting if I tried getting clever or fancy.

PS: I should add that none of this is a straight repudiation of the AK platform as a whole. But the takeaway should be that there's nothing particularly legendary about it other than how widely available it was and how much better it was than most systems in use by the countries and non-governmental forces that adopted them in its early days of widespread popularity; the landscape didn't offer a lot of breadth in choice back then, and its competitor hadn't sorted out teething issues. The "reliability" of an AK is literally nothing more than you can achieve out of essentially any rifle platform in existence. We just don't see many other countries' designs in constant use through decades of conflict, because most countries don't spend decades at war or directly supplying conflict forces the way the US and USSR did. Like, no one's going to have an enduring memory of the L85 other than UK servicemembers. Everyone's seen an AK, and after Vietnam, just about anyone except folks who run both platforms regularly and in a variety of operating conditions is typically exposed to a great deal more myth than reality.

I appreciate your thorough response, HaplessOperator. You've got me questioning a lot of what I thought I knew about the AK vis-a-vis the AR-15.

Isn't that a feature as much as a bug? I've read that the AK's loose tolerances contribute to reduced accuracy compared to the AR, but that they allow the AK to continue to operate in pretty much any environment with very little routine maintenance.

Lest anyone think that I'm an AR hater, I am not. Although I tend to be cynical and rather suspicious of the US military-industrial complex, there must be legitimate reasons that the AR platform is still going strong. It's the only assault rifle that I've ever operated and I haven't experienced any performance issues with it. I must say, though, cleaning it is a bit of a chore. Again, I don't know from experience but I've read that the AK has fewer working parts and is easier to disassemble/reassemble than the AR.

In the T2kU, I think I'd still take the AK-74 over the M-16A2. I'm not quite fully convinced that the AR family is as robust or likely to function in adverse conditions as the Kalashnikov, and in Poland, at least, ammunition for the latter would be easier to come by.

-

I'll do apologetics on all sides, though some more than others
 

It might be useful to talk about meanings here, and to clarify what tolerances mean for a gun, as well as clarify my own language, since I was mirroring yours; it's going to remain obfuscated unless I do. So, tolerances in a gun - as with any manufacturing - are simply deviations from spec. It often gets used colloquially (especially in discussions on AK reliability) to mean the overhead in design. That is, in the case of designing a cylinder exactly 1 inch wide, when you need it to be a minimum of .95 inches for optimum function, you're generally talking about clearance. The tolerance for that part may be so many hundredths or thousandths of an inch plus or minus that diameter.

In a gun, if your manufacturing methodology has loose tolerances from the designed standard, that means - literally - nothing other than you're going to have parts that don't fit, due to both stacking tolerances and variance in one edge being off beyond a functionally acceptable tolerance at the same time the part mating to it is off as well. In Soviet AKs, this was fairly common, due to inconsistent manufacturing quality and essentially non-existent QC, though the platform can generally survive this due to a sufficient overhead in design specifications. For example, both the front and rear sight bases in Soviet-era AKs are often off-spec to a significant degree, as are the gas block, and - oftentimes - the front and rear trunnions themselves. When parts like the trunnions and gas blocks are out of tolerance, it doesn't contribute to reliability or resilience against environmental contamination; it merely means that it's going to be things like blowing more or less gas than designed, or the parts beating the absolute hell out of each other since the fitment isn't as designed.

This is no more easy on the AK than it is any other design. This isn't an indictment of your intelligence or knowledge, but you can see how this in and of itself wouldn't explain making something reliable, just wear out quicker, or serve as an indication of cheap (not efficient) manufacture. The lion's share of AK reliability is myth; it's no more reliable or less reliable than most other service rifles we've collectively made as humans after World War 2, and most of the characteristics ascribed to AKs apply more or less equally to other platforms. AKs deal with cold weather pretty well as designed, but that's about the only particularly notable thing about them, and it's a capability that can be rather efficiently engineered into existing designs, as the Canadians have done with several platforms over the years. That said, best way to keep your gun ice-free in ultra-low temperatures is to keep it sealed and well-lubricated with a temp-appropriate petroleum distillate, and an AK is far from sealed, and an AK full of ice is going to fail to cycle just as surely as any other gun full of ice is. THAT said... most weather almanacs I've seen for the time don't suggest that this would be a concern, anyway. Switzerland, in 4th Edition, on the other hand...

Something to mention in favor of the AK is how sharply tapered the cartridge it fires is; that's why the magazines look the way they do. It takes an awful lot wrong to cause a malfunction in cartridge extraction in an AK. Also, the internal open space in the receiver DOES allow for the buildup of gross particulate in some of the interior spaces without serious obstruction to the action, but once you get anything in the path of travel for the bolt, guide rod, or in the chamber, it fails just as easily as any other weapon, for the same reasons that any other weapon would fail: the operation is being physically obstructed. This is probably where a lot of the perception of its resilience to mud probably comes from; most weapons solve this problem by simply not letting the mud in in the first place, or by having nowhere for the mud to actually infiltrate.

On accuracy... it's mostly down to the 7.62 Soviet cartridge, and more specifically, the QC and batch quality of Russian ammo. 7.62x39 has a dog crap ballistic coefficient, but manufactured properly, it's fine. The trouble is that the same philosophy that applied to Soviet rifles was applied to their ammunition, and at the time, it was inconsistent as all hell, along with inconsistent barrel mounting and poor crowning at a number of their factories, which essentially causes the bullet to be thrown off by a minute degree as it leaves the barrel. This, combined with inconsistent ammunition quality, propellant loading, and the subsequent variability in velocity and trajectory. All of these things combine to give you a far more variable beaten zone at any given distance on any particular target at any particular angle of fire.

There's no assumption of hate/dislike. People can enjoy whatever guns they want. For the longevity of the platform, it's largely due to how iterated-upon it is, the depth of the market, and the simple fact that there's literally nothing out there that would be worth the cost of replacing it; there's plenty of guns that do this thing or that better than a rack-grade M16, but there's practically nothing out there that does so for the same cost, and reducing build quality of most platforms to match an AR in cost would turn the platform in question into a trash fire; meanwhile, the ceiling on ARs is essentially sky-high - spend HK416 money on an AR-15, and you've got an AR-15 that will run circles around a 416, or a SCAR, or... you get the idea.

As to the moving parts bit, they're more or less identical. An AR-15 has eight parts that move when the operating system cycles, the same as an AK. Assembly or disassembly is something I've genuinely never considered, as it's kind of neither here nor there. You disassemble a Glock with your finger and thumb by pulling down two tabs, giving the slide some play, and squeezing the trigger; this doesn't mean that it's more or less suitable than a Beretta 92's pressing a button and rotating a tab, or a Sig P226, etc., merely that it's disassembled in a different manner. The AK's method of disassembly (and its construction) mean that it's got kind of a garbage sight radius and that it's more or less impossible to mount optics to it in a typical manner without a side mounting fixture.

Here, we're in full agreement, after a fashion. I kept a couple AKs in my truck as insurance against an absolute worst case. Ammunition and supply of other sorts was never short, and I could literally walk into the ASP and walk out with entire pallets, and was often encouraged to do so simply to make room for the next shipment coming in, and we were rolling like Scrooge McDuck in 40mm, LAWs, AT4s, and ordnance of all descriptions, but by the end of my first deployment, I had run completely out of ammunition exactly once, and had resolved to take several measures to ensure such a thing would never impact me again, no matter what the failure point.

Bonus info: the best AKs were never made in Russia, or Poland for that matter. Bulgaria, Romania, and the German DDR were rocking what were basically Cadillacs in comparison to the Polish and Russian pieces, and once the iteration of the platform began by countries outside of RSFSR, the AMD series and like "upgrades" more or less left the original platform (both AKM and AK-74) in the dust.

AKs, like the T-series tanks, have a mythology around them that is wildly overblown compared to the actual hardware sitting in front of you. I could tell you some truly hilarious stories about the so-called "monkey models" I got to shoot hell out of, but that's probably a story for another thread, along with the elaboration of what being a monkey model actually means in a practical sense when you're considering smacking the things with HEAT rounds.

And please, call me Hapless. All my friends do.

M4 SOPMOD for me.
 

The M4 SOPMOD came out around 1997 and was in frontline units by 1998 so as far as assault rifles available during the T2k era it just barely squeaks buy. The M4 SOPMOD allows for all of the accoutrements that we take for granted now but were groundbreaking in the 90s and before the gun porn rifle modifications got too crazy.

There's also its more common, longer-reaching brother
 

It was actually first rolled out with Block 1 in '95 (!), just a year before the M16A4 was type classified (and which they'd been kicking around with as the M16A2E4 since about the same time the SeaBees started kicking the M16A2E3 around), and '97/'98 gave us the M16A4 rollout, and in vastly greater numbers, with all the same rail space (and more) with flat top and longer KAC quad-rail Picatinnys as the M4 SOPMOD. None of this is to disagree or nitpick, but only to emphasize that the RIS and RAS systems were around much earlier than most folks imagine. The kicker is that the rollout could have gone MUCH quicker; the forging house at Colt was only dedicating a tiny amount of capacity to this upgrade, and KAC was doing the RIS and RAS work essentially at a back office, with Crane working in essentially the same capacity toward these integrations for the SOCOM side of the house.

Also, how did they go crazy? Practically everything we do to a rifle for the past 20+ years is more or less what anyone halfway serious about shooting would have done to their rifles back in the 70s, 80s or 90s, except you don't have to hunt down a legendary mythical gunsmith that everyone in the country knows the name of to get it done; you just drop the parts in yourself after having them delivered to your door.

All that happened was that you now have better quality glass on top without drilling on your gun or mounting an interface, can mount a light without needing a clamp that holds a giant Maglite, and you don't have to zip-tie your handguards together while having parts zip-tied to your handguards, and we don't have to mess with the D-ring assembly anymore, cuz D-rings suck rancid, overripe dog turds.

I typed a response and it didn't post!
 

I didn't see M16A4 nor SOPMOD get in the hands of the rank and file until 97- 98. I know they existed, but I didn't see them when working with Marines nor Army so speaking of the T2K context, I think they just got under the wire for inclusion.

As for gun porn I'm referring to cut out magazine wells, monogramed charging handles and upper receivers (Zombie Response Team, etc.) over engineered charging handles, slings, vanity flash suppressors, etc. Many products are made for the range and are not durable. Theres a lot of garbage out there that I'm sure you've seen. And I don't know this, but don't Soldiers and Marines still zip tie their add-ons to their rifles still as back up? I can't imagine the military changing that much but it's been a minute for me.

BTW, I'm glad someone is active on here! Good to hear from you.

As far as I know this has not been an issue, but browsers and platforms keep changing small elements which might have an effect.

One thought, if you are taking a long time to craft a post, you might want to "Preview Post" every once in a while to refresh your cookies.

If you see this more than once please send me a PM with your Platform, OS, Browser. If someone else has seen this please PM me and I will create a thread to try to track this down.

The screed is followed by something far more amenable, I assure you
 

Oh, I know they took a while to distribute; I was just making the point we had the designs locked in and type-classified even earlier than you supposed; had we gone directly to unit replacement, there were - at the time - four major forging houses in addition to two primary military workshops that could have handled conversion and distro. If oil prices had spiked, and we'd seen a resurgence in spending, and the Soviet Union had never collapsed, it's a solid bet we'd have seen A4s and M4A1s in everyone's hands vice M16A2s. I've often extolled the point that after GW1, and under the working concept that the bear we're hunting is still out there, it's a solid bet our forces would have looked a lot more like 2001-2004 than the early to mid 80s aesthetic everyone seems so latched onto, there being a clear and present reason to neither quit while you're ahead nor risk falling behind. The makers of 1e and 2.2 did what they could, but hindsight being what it is, there's a lot of stuff I read having served after 9/11 and getting hands-on with a bunch of Russian hardware that seems more than a little laughable.

ON TO PARTS AND ACCESSORIES, THE REAL MEAT.

Magazine wells cut for faster reloads don't really impact the structural integrity of the weapon, and the beveled flares actually increase the overall strength of the lower receiver in that portion of the gun, while making it easier to slam a magazine home in a compromised shooting position.

As for the charging handles, yeah, there's some crap out there, but there was always crap out there for basically every other firearm that had decent market saturation and aftermarket. A good ambi is solid as all hell, and it's not hard to find T-handles (like most parts these days) that are significantly better than what's issued, especially if you want to be able to run your full manual of arms conveniently from the weak side.

The slings? The old two-points were kind of crap for anything except flat range shooting, and were basically as minimal as you could get in form and function, just enough to carry the rifle without much trouble. You can make a nice loop sling with them, but that's not really a sell for combat usage. A good three point, though, does everything the two-point does for retention, plus being able to blast the rifle off of you if it's trying to drown your ass in a ditched helo or vehicle rollover into water, and having your rifle bungeeing to your workspace and hanging by itself at a ready position for easy manipulation or ready to grab after sliding it out of the way for a sidearm transition is pretty solid. Worked out for me alright fighting through Karmah and Zaidon, anyway, and I can tell you dead-ass that an old two-point would have legit been substandard and in some cases life-threatening; does the same job, just doesn't have the same limitations, and does things that a two-point simply can't.

For the muzzle devices... not really sure how one can break other than being screwed on incorrectly to the muzzle threads and having a bullet strike on the way out or just being horrifically timed; they're generally made from the same material the receiver; the original AR-15 and M16 flash hiders were aluminum; I prefer steel, myself. Properly timed and fitted, there's not really much to break, and it's certainly not a load-bearing part.

I've got a few ARs at home that I'd have taken in a heartbeat over what they handed me, and that are better timed for the M855 round; green tips don't even bottom the buffer out, so you get a nice, smooth, punchless recoil pattern with each shot, and gassing it up to eat anything is a breeze with the adjustable gas block.

Like I said, I'll not debate you one bit that there's crap out there, but the military's transition to sourcing civilian designs instead of leaving it to the Ordnance Department or Natick meant one thing: civilian sports and tactical industry was destined to leave the military in the dustbin with small arms design, and the coup was accomplished fairly bloodlessly several decades ago. Only real requirement is to spend wisely, and avoid crap manufacturers. Do that, and you can fairly trivially build a rifle that smokes a brand new rifle from your company's armory for about 3/5 to 3/4 of the price.

As for the zip ties, they wanted us to, but we gave up on it pretty quick in onesies and twosies here and there once we got in country, and then to greater and lesser degrees in larger numbers, and no one seemed to mind. It's mostly a concern for training, far as I ever saw, and once you've got a PEQ-2 or a PEQ-16, a Surefire M3, TA31 or a red dot and magnifier all mounted, your rifle starts becoming covered in Paracord pretty quick. I did zip-ties for a while, and then said hell with it and went with blue Loctite for knobs and mounting plates. Any impact serious enough to rip a secured accessory off its mount is going to destroy the accessory, anyway, or for the electronics, physically rip the body of the device's body open when it goes with the mounting plate.We had a few combat losses of equipment, but it was stuff like vehicle rollovers crushing a rifle that fell out, or an M249 being ejected and sent flying and landing like a javelin or smacking into a rock and jacking the receiver, or stuff catching frag.

Now, with all the puffing and trifling out of the way, glad to meet ya! And yeah, happy to see folks besides the admins running around. I gather you're a slightly older salt. Be cool to swap some stories some time; I'll talk at the drop of a boonie cover, and hold forth on the tools of the trade all day.

Had the same thing, but I don't think it's a browser issue
 

I had that happen to me once a day or so ago, but I'm pretty sure it was exactly what you suggested, because a "token timed out." It directed me to reload the page, and I (rather cleverly, hah!) copy-pasted the novel I was typing before doing so.