The History Of The Ak 47: Features, And Specs
Some of the Specs, Features, and History of the AK47
The AK-47 has to be one of the most famous weapons systems in the world. For starters, it has a long history, which begins in 1941. While the Battle of Bryansk was ragging on, Mikhail Kalashnikov, a young Russian tank driver was recuperating from battlefield injuries. During this time, he spent his time drawing up plans for a new weapons system - a battle rifle with the capability and capacity of offering suppressive fire that is typical of the two-man machine-gun systems of the time, while being portable as was typical of the battle rifle.
While the war ended in 1945 without Mikhail finishing his weapons system, he continued to develop and refine the weapon. Eventually, he developed the iconic AK-47. The Avtomat Kalashnikova (automatic Kalashnikov) was accepted as a new weapon system by the Soviet Union’s Red Army in 1947, hence the reference of 47 in the name of the weapon. The AK-47 is intentionally simple but also very reliable, robust, and affordable, qualities few other weapons systems have been able to emulate.
It is little wonder that as a weapons system, it has hardly changed over the last 70 years. Additionally, it still is a popular firearm even today. What makes it such an incredible weapon system is:
Simple Design
While many weapons system developed after the World War II tended to incorporate revolutionary technology and intricate ground-breaking machining, the AK-47 shunned away from all these. Instead, it has a simple design and assumes a rather rugged form. It can be machined using commonly found machinery and uses basic firearm technology.
For instance, they are made of stamped metal parts, they use simple buttstocks, wood grips, and foregrips and are devoid of creature comforts found in other firearms. This simple design epitomizes its purposefulness design philosophy. It also improves reliability, negates potential problems as there are fewer things that can fail, and makes it cheap to manufacture and acquire. Thus, if one fails, replacing the gun is not an expensive affair.
Unmatched Reliability
AK-47s are famous for their reliability. The military realm is filled with the folklore of the misused AK-47s that still worked as intended. This firearm is inherently reliable. Stories are told of soldiers not cleaning their AKs for long periods, dropping this gun in the muds, or running over them with trucks and still using the guns with no problems.
The AK is designed with a loose philosophy, which yields the feeling of impreciseness and ruggedness. However, although being imprecise while developing a firearm is counterintuitive, it works for the AK as gets rid of operational failures that fraught other “tighter” firearms.
Strategic Firepower
Keeping true the purposefulness nature of the AKs offer strategic firepower. They are not high-powered rifles that have the capability to take out enemy positions in one-fell sweep. They are designed to unleash a massive amount of firepower to the enemy, suppressing them without having to carry a two-man weapon system and heavy ammunition. As such, they have a curved magazine that holds 30-rounds of the 7.6X39mm ammunition. These rounds fall in between the M4’s 5.56mm rounds and the M1’s 7.62X51mm. Therefore, they are punchy but not too heavy and bulky.
