Assault rifle inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov dies at 94

BBC ^

[kronos77]

he inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov, has died aged 94, Russian TV reports.

The automatic rifle he designed became one of the world's most familiar and widely used weapons.

Its comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture, as well as reliable and easy to maintain.

Although honoured by the state, Kalashnikov made little money from his gun. He once said he would have been better off designing a lawn mower.

Mikhail Kalashnikov was admitted to hospital with internal bleeding in November.

[donmeaker]

Cut the rate of fire in half, and you cut the average recoil in half.

Spread the recoil force out, as with a long recoil operating system, and you make it possible to compensate for its operation with a steady push.

And reduce the rate of fire, and your ammunition usage is reduced.

As you say, simple physics.

[MasterGunner01]

You can play around with long recoil and reducing cyclic rates but physics are still a constant you have to deal with. The fundamental design of a selective fire, in a caliber like .30-06 or 7.62 NATO in a 6.5 pound rifle is a fatal flaw.

Why the US Army was so pig headed about trying to marry these opposites together remains an obvious head scratcher to this very day. That's why the Germans pioneered the intermediate rifle cartridge represented by the 7.92x33 Kurz: it had adequate combat range and it was controllable and accurate in the automatic fire role.

[donmeaker]

The US had the similar .30 Carbine (7.62x33) at about the same time the Germans had the 7.92x33 Kurz and made about 5 million of them during WWII.

The M-14 was an attempt to reduce the .45, .30 Carbine and .30/06 rounds and M-3 submachine gun, M-2 Carbine and M-1 Garand and BAR to a single weapon and ammunition. A laudable goal, but it took the acceptance of smaller caliber M193 rounds to make it moderately practical, with all the limitations, and even now squads get a different machine gun, and the M-16(A4) is supplemented with the M-4.

A controllable LMG with a full power round is possible, and the Chauchat in 8mm lebel did it in WWI. You wouldn’t want a long recoil system in a rifle, as it could be pushed out of battery in close combat. Chauchat had problems, but control wasn’t one.

If I was king, I would have a 5.56mmX45 bullpup weapon with a quick change barrel, so a heavy barrel could be dropped in to get a light machine gun capability, or a lighter barrel could be dropped in for a more mobile rifle. I also prefer delayed blowback to gas operations mechanisms. Note: patent 6,079,138 is over 10 years old.

[MasterGunner01]

There is much to like in a bullpup type rifle. The Brit L85A2 (after H&K finally got it to work), the Steyr AUG, and French FAMAS are three that come immediately to mind. I would opt for upgrading the L85A2 and AUG to the 6.8x43 SPC round and that would be just about the perfect package for me. The AUG already has the QCB. The L85 could be modified for one. I'm not to impressed with the FAMAS, so I'll pass on that one.

[donmeaker]

The old Brit L85 was the most advanced assault rifle in the world.

It actually got lighter as time went on, when the fiddly bits fell off. HK did some hard core glue work with it. The operating system is a fairly standard AR-18 knock off.

I like having the connection between the trigger and the sear as a light protected cable, with both ends under spring tension. That way there is minimal trigger play absorbed by the action bar flexing.

Before anyone gets too big a head, when the US M-1 Carbine was initially fielded, it had some problems: the magazine release was right next to the off safe button. Just when a soldier might decide he wants to use it, he would sometimes drop his magazine. Not the kind of thing to give you confidence.

Audi Murphy in his first combat patrol lined up his carbine on a German, fired and saw no effect. He blamed the carbine for the miss, and asserted that if he had been unable to blame the carbine, he could not have gone on to do the other things he did (normally with a Garand), but at least once with a .50 cal MG mounted to a Tank Destroyer.

[donmeaker]

the 5.56mmx45 is much more effective when the bullet hits meat at more than 2500 fps. (the effects decrease with decreased velocity but that is a useful threshold for discussion) The bullpup lets you have a long barrel, so that you start at higher velocity, so that magic number is maintained at longer ranges. That is why my patent: permitted a 28 inch rifle with a 24 inch barrel to get that high initial velocity with a short handy rifle. By contrast the M-4 only maintains that threshold velocity out to about 50 meters!

By contrast, the SAW (Minimi) has a plenty long barrel, but can engage the enemy at longer ranges, and at those longer ranges, the 2500 fps velocity may not be maintained.

The US 7.62 ball round has a thick bronze jacket, and normally doesn’t fragment. The German 7.62 ball has a thin steel jacket, and does fragment.

I don’t know what the effect of the shift from m855 ball to the new tungsten bullets will be. Tungsten is denser, but mixing in other metals to keep the volume up could help, or hinder.

Another factor is the yaw angle when it strikes the target. The bullet works best with a bit of yaw or pitch. If it hits exactly nose on, it tends to slide right through the target, merely stretching a bit of tissue along the way. If it has a bit of yaw or pitch as it strikes, the center of lift is about the 25% point, and it pitches more, turning sideways. The M855 or old M193 had a cannelure that would tear, and the bullet would fragment. The fragments compounded damage by cutting stretched tissue, leaving a baseball sized hole. That ‘cut while stretched’ was the idea behind the old Black Talon pistol round.

Of course the most lethal round in terms of terminal velocity would be a shotgun with number 1 shot. That is big enough to penetrate a man through and through, and small enough to have a bunch of projectiles. A 12 gauge 3 inch magnum puts out 25 each projectiles that are about 0.30 inch diameter. Like hitting a guy with a burst from a machine gun.

I like bullets in the 6.5-7mm range too, but if a 5.56 round can get equivalent lethality by increasing the velocity, well powder weighs less than lead! I think I like a 3000 fps 5.56 better than a 2600 fps 7mm round, and can carry more of them.

[Repeat Offender]

I agree with everything you posted.

My point was we had guys, myself included, double tap hadji at close distance with 5.56 and the SOBs ran away.

One of our guys put four rounds, center mass, 5.56, in a scumbag at a distance of about 15 feet. The rounds went through and through and the guy ran off - I don't know how far he made it, but he still had his weapon and was still able to sprint.

Whereas, we had guys pick up AKs, dragunovs, PSL etc (noting the 7.6x54 is mostly steel core) and make bigger holes in the enemy, all the while utilizing effective marksmanship principles.

Now, as someone (you?) mentioned previously a bigger round isn't always going to have the desired effect - particularly if your enemy is high. One of my buddy's favorite stories: is the dude one of our snipers shot in the chest with a SASR .50 .........hadji appeared to walk away unscathed. In fact, he had back stepped around the corner just out of sight, about three feet, and died.

All of that said, I am heavily biased against M16/M4 weapons and have pointed out such on previous threads. I also am not a fan of the caliber. Every time I post on the topic, my statements/sentiments will reflect such.

And when it comes to fighting someone, whose mindset you may not know (not every hadji fully buys into the allah will protect me garbage), I will take a weapon with loose tolerances that can handle nearly all conditions and fires (relatively) cheap and readily available ammunition that makes a bigger hole. I haven't had the opportunity to target practice beyond 200yds, but at 200yds I have two AKs that with iron sights can hold fairly tight groups on a 6"pie pan.

And, until recently, I could buy and trick out two AKs for the price of one half decent AR. And the ammo is only 2/3 the price and is interchangeable with my SKS'.

Anyhow, hope Christmas and New Years was good for you - I've enjoyed the debate.

[donmeaker]

A fellow named Phineas Gage had a crowbar blown through his head by a premature blast. He never even lost consciousness.

The crowbar was about an inch in diameter. I saw film of a fellow in Vietnam that took an RPG round through his chest. It was close enough that it hadn’t armed. The guy survived.

Heart surgeons have at least one simple rule: When you open a man, first find the heart on which you will work. People have them located in different places, from under the liver, to the lung cavity, and on either side of the body.

I can sure agree that shooting someone and having them not fall down must be very annoying. Modern technique has, I am told gone away from the double tap to ‘keep shooting until the threat is resolved’. That substantially increases use of ammunition, but at least ammunition is less dependent on mule team than previously. Training in the new methods would seem to be harder, and somewhat dependent on control of a reactive target. We haven’t fought a war against an enemy that wears body armor that I know of- excepting WWI German machinegunners had steel helmet additions. That would further suggest that a mere double tap might not be the way to go.

Again, I haven’t been shot at. I have run .45ACP grease gun ranges (and the 90 round fam course used reactive targets) as well as shot AK, M-14, M-16 rifle programs and various machine guns.

Thanks for your insights.