Well, not as reliable as the Kalashnikovs. But literally no other autoloading small arm ever created is.
The Kalashnikov is a masterful design. It is simple, easy and cheap to manufacture by any of a number of processes (stamping, milling, forging), and literally can be buried in mud for days and remain operational. Sure, it's not as accurate as the AR platform (e.g., M-4, M-16), but what good does that do you when your gun doesn't work?
In fairness to the AR, it is a highly advanced, very reliable weapon when properly maintained. Its early reputation for failures can really be blamed on the Army's failure to properly train the cleaning processes or issue appropriate cleaning tools. With good cleaning, it's a marvellous design. The Kalashnikov, on the other hand, can be thrown at a raw conscript and will remain operational basically no matter what.
Interestingly, this dichotomy goes back much further. Prior to the AK there was a short run of the SKS (mostly adopted by China later, and also designed by Kalashnikov), and before that the (in)famous workhorse of both the Czar and the Glorious Revolution, the Mosin-Nagant. Compare this to the weapons used by the US over this period, viz., the Krag, Springfield, and M1 Garand---especially the latter!
Tangentially, it's quite impressive to consider that, in an era of bolt action infantry rifles (the Brits, Germans, French, Russians, and Italians had the Enfield, K98K, MAS-36, Mosin-Nagant, and Carcano, respectively), the US led the way towards modern rifles with the Garand. Helluva gun, and fun as hell to shoot.
You forgot the M-14, which is a much-improved (far more accurate, faster to reload, higher capacity per reload), variant on the M-1 Garand.
Having shot all three (I own a National Match M-1, a NM M1A (the civilian (non-auto) variant of the M-14) and "more than one" AR-15), I can tell you that I vastly prefer the M1A.
The only time I ever had the M-1 'jam' was when it suffered a round of .308 through it during a match, resulting in an 'X', but also a failure to extract. I signaled a malfunction, the armorer came over, checked with me (3X) that the round had gone downrange, then placed the butt of the rifle against the ground, and stomped on the operating handle with his boot. The rifle extracted the (now fire-formed straight (no neck) .308 brass, and chambered a new round.
I was allowed to finish my string.
I've never had the M1A jam, but it probably only has 10,000 rounds through it (and yes, it was new when my father (who used to shoot classified as 'Distinguished') purchased it in the early 60s.)
The AR15s, (Colts, all) are, by any comparison, toys.
These days I shoot a Model 70 Winchester in .308 (it and the Garand were both my grandfather's.)
Since this is HN:
the M-14/M1A is like Lisp, elegant, but accessible only to a few.
the M1 Garand is like 'C', everybody's ancestors used one, but few know how to use it.
The M-16/AR15 is like Perl, cheap, but prone to failure.
The AK-47 is like PHP. Even the retards can make one work.
A lovely weapon indeed. I had the opportunity to fire one once and have always wanted to repeat the experience. It's heavy, and the stock in a rather old-fashioned shape for a combat rifle, but it's very controllable on full-auto, exceedingly accurate and substantially more powerful than the 5.56x45 or 7.62x39. If I knew someone was going to be shooting at me, I can think of few small arms I'd prefer.
There is mention of the Heckler&Koch HK 416, which replaces the direct impingement system with a piston design. I would like to know, if anyone has knowledge or can make some informed speculation, what that does to recoil, the vector of that recoil (straight back in line with the stock, or with a stronger perpendicular/vertical component), and rate of fire of the weapon. Regarding rate of fire, if slower, does that matter in the field?
I'll bow to nobody in my disdain for the AR platform as a battle rifle. Direct gas impingement blows; it is broken by design. I don't care that it eliminates a moving part, the right answer is gas-piston (like the AK) or even better, op-rod. This is the answer to those who claim that it is a perfectly fine rifle as long as it's properly cleaned: (1) sometimes life happens and you have to use a rifle that's in a state other than perfectly clean; and (2) even if it starts out as immaculate, use it long enough, eg in a situation in which the metal bits of the rifle are literally glowing white hot (as described in the NYT article) and you'll find yourself with a filthy rifle you just don't have the time to properly clean. Also, the gas tube can break, rendering the rifle almost entirely useless since the soft metal and lame plastic makes it a relatively poor club or lever.
Granted, the notion of the upper receiver being just another part makes it a nearly infinitely flexible system that supports a plethora of caliber options. This is it's main saving grace as a civilian rifle that is realistically not going to be subjected to the rigors of battle. There are lots of easily-swappable parts available and just about anyone can snap together some pieces that will still shoot quite tight. Of course, the military is standardized on the stock rifle and has stupidly chosen the 5.56mm poodleshooter round which is obviously heavier but has much worse terminal characteristics than the 7.62x51 NATO round. No wonder special forces and other units that can opt out of the rifle do so. Yes, it's partly done because they can but mostly because they really, really need to.
The AK-47 has much, much worse accuracy but has to be considered a better battle rifle because it is good enough in that department and is much sturdier and physically holds up better than the AR platform. The AK line harkens back to a time when battle rifles were battle rifles: the Garand, the Mauser, the Nagant, and Enfield (bolties all except the Garand) were real rifles and shot real ammo. John Moses Browning would be half-impressed and half-horrified at Stoner's creation.
Since this is HN, I'll make an analogy to a poorly designed and written web server. When you're not stressing it, it doesn't matter that you're doing something in O(n^2) when you should be doing it in O(1). But when push comes to shove, no amount of external patches (more bandwidth, more CPU) can disguise the fact that the software sucks.
Oh, and the SKS was designed by Simonov, not Kalashnikov.
Oh, and the SKS was designed by Simonov, not Kalashnikov.
You are 100% right. My bad.
I mostly agree with your assessment of the AR, but I was trying to give it a fair shake. Iraq and Afghanistan are really pretty terrible places to have a gun that's finicky about being cleaned, though.
Different guns for different folks. The reliability of an AK is desired in armies that don't or can't invest in as much training as the United States. "Guerilla" soldiers may actually have to hide their weapon in mud for a few days, I doubt this is the case for American soldiers who clean their weapons regularly. I'd also wager that accuracy is less important for soldiers who "spray and pray" than American soldiers who need to pick someone off a roof.
Since it's HN, I thought I'd make a plug for understanding your customer.
I'm wondering whose bread is getting buttered here? What new weapons platforms are competing for Army dollars, and which one solves the reliability "problem"? Seems like this is the sort of article that comes out of a press junket to a wide-open rifle range with lots of new toys for a reporter to play with.
M-16 bashing has been a popular sport since the rifle was introduced. Many (me included) feel the heavier, more rugged and far moe powerful M-14 was a better weapon. That said, the worst problems of the early M-16 were corrected long ago, and the current version isn't especially unreliable compared to other modern military rifles.
Failure to extract is remedied by the chrome plated chamber in the A2 and later variants (i.e. everything but the early vietnam war variants). I have seen it once on the range (not my rifle, nor the Marine I was coaching), but I've never seen it necessary to use a cleaning rod to extra -- pulling on the charging handle while banging the butt on the deck solved the problem.
The modern M4 probably would have been the perfect rifle for Vietnam. The rifle and ammunition are light, which is important when you don't have a truck near by. Urban combat where quick lethality is important wasn't as common. The chromed chamber eliminates the rust problem.
A lot of those factors have changed, but I still read most of these stories as "the grass is always greener".
How many soldiers have died due to an M16 not killing the enemy fast enough? How many soldiers would die from being less familiar with the weapon during the transition period? Would the weapon chosen as a replacement actually be the best for the job, or would the choice be based on which defense contractor is in a state with a senator on the panel who will be ignoring the military's recommendation?
The "it's not a real rifle, it doesn't shoot big enough ammunition, it can't be used as an effective club" arguments sound a lot like traditional RDBMS fans saying that key value stores are useless because they can't guarantee foreign key constraints, or, maybe more appropriately, it's like someone rejecting an effective approximation algorithm because it has an exponential worst case runtime. Life, even war, is not a James Bond movie. Of course special forces uses different equipment -- they have a different mission. If you optimize for the usual case, you may be de-optimizing for the usual case.
How many soldiers have died due to an M16 not killing the enemy fast enough? How many soldiers would die from being less familiar with the weapon during the transition period? Would the weapon chosen as a replacement actually be the best for the job, or would the choice be based on which defense contractor is in a state with a senator on the panel who will be ignoring the military's recommendation?
Don't they put out a tender, get a sample of weapons and have 100 soldiers do test firings, range events and war games using those weapons? How can the senator manipulate that, you try the things first, if they're not better than what you've got then don't buy them. If it's better but only in limited conditions then can't you buy some and only use them in those limited conditions? Is military procurement really that broken.
It would depend on the particular tests they are allowed to undergo. For example, it's been stated that the M16 needs to be properly cleaned, so any test that would emphasis taking a pristine sample and shooting would not produce adverse results and probably make the gun place highly due to its better accuracy.
However, were the trials to include sullying the rifle, banging it against something, throwing it on the ground repeatedly, etc. What would the results be then?
As another poster mentioned, sometimes in life (and especially in combat I would assume) shit happens, and you need a gun to fire then, not when it's all nice and clean.
So it's very easy to game the system, especially if the war games include strictly enforcing weapon maintenance which might not be the case in actual combat.
I though that not killing your enemy is actually a strategic decision, not a flaw.
If you kill someone, your remove one person from the battle, but if you injure them you remove two - the injured, and someone to help. And you use up resources of the enemy for medical treatment.
You also look better from a PR point of view, and once the war is over they don't hate you as much.
I can confirm that. I have heard the same logic from War Veterans (Iran/Iraq). During the war Iran had 2 kinds of rifles AK-47 for IRGC and HK G-3 for Army. G-3 was notorious for its ability to kill in 1 shot in torso which removed one enemy soldier from battlefield while AK-47 only caused injuries which in turn made a bigger tax on enemy manpower and logistics during an operation.
Wow, at first I thought this might be something out of the NYT archives. These sorts of discussions were being had when it was first introduced in Vietnam, as mentioned by the author. It's stunning that this type of concern is still present in something that's been in use for more than 40 years.
The controversy is just media and political hype. I recently wrote a blog post debunking it.
To sum it up: The M4 works fine when operated under the Army guidelines. It is a rifle, not a machine gun.
Trying to use a rifle like a machine gun is like trying to do Final Cut Pro editing on a iBook G3 laptop ... it ain't going to work well - but don't blame Apple.
I have to disagree. Weapons soldiers expect to rely on every day should be overengineered such that they continue to function when intentionally mistreated. The M-14 was. The M-16 and its variants are not.
Are weapons manufacturers as "evil" as the people behind http://www.swoopo.com/ ? (ie taking advantage of base human instincts and game theory for profit -- substantial profit).
The Kalashnikov is a masterful design. It is simple, easy and cheap to manufacture by any of a number of processes (stamping, milling, forging), and literally can be buried in mud for days and remain operational. Sure, it's not as accurate as the AR platform (e.g., M-4, M-16), but what good does that do you when your gun doesn't work?
In fairness to the AR, it is a highly advanced, very reliable weapon when properly maintained. Its early reputation for failures can really be blamed on the Army's failure to properly train the cleaning processes or issue appropriate cleaning tools. With good cleaning, it's a marvellous design. The Kalashnikov, on the other hand, can be thrown at a raw conscript and will remain operational basically no matter what.
Interestingly, this dichotomy goes back much further. Prior to the AK there was a short run of the SKS (mostly adopted by China later, and also designed by Kalashnikov), and before that the (in)famous workhorse of both the Czar and the Glorious Revolution, the Mosin-Nagant. Compare this to the weapons used by the US over this period, viz., the Krag, Springfield, and M1 Garand---especially the latter!
Tangentially, it's quite impressive to consider that, in an era of bolt action infantry rifles (the Brits, Germans, French, Russians, and Italians had the Enfield, K98K, MAS-36, Mosin-Nagant, and Carcano, respectively), the US led the way towards modern rifles with the Garand. Helluva gun, and fun as hell to shoot.