I blogged about this two years ago, when I was just starting this blog.
Nothing has changed.
Izhmash makes AK-74s, which fire a similar round to the M-4/M-16. Since Izhmash is facing bankruptcy, an order for a million or so rifles would make the Russians very, very happy.
But that won't ever happen, as "Not Invented Here" is the number one guiding principle of the Army Ordnance Corps. It was bad enough when the Army was forced to adopt a rifle that was developed by a civilian and first adopted by the Air Force, no way in hell will the Army adopt another foreign rifle. They got rid of the last foreign-designed rifle that the Army adopted, the Krag-Jørgensen, as soon as possible (and replaced it with a rifle that the Army pirated from the Germans).
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4 comments:
I read a Vietnam historical account a while ago where the author and his squad came across a dead Viet Cong mostly buried in mud. The corpse had been there for ages, a forgotten leftover from a battle over a year before this discovery.
Of course, the VC's AK-47 was right there in the mud with him. The author pulled the rifle out of the ground, worked the charging handle, and pulled the trigger. Despite lying buried in mud for the better part of twelve months, all thirty rounds fired as if the rifle was factory new.
It'd be nice if our troops had a weapon that would work when they needed it to work, not when it felt like working.
The AK-74 still has a lower muzzle velocity than the M4, so isn't going to be as accurate at range. And the record of the U.S. military at procuring former SovBloc weapons has been utter disaster, though luckily it's our hapless "allies" in the Iraqi and Afghan armies that have mostly borne the brunt of it. That said, reliability has its own quality. I just wish the U.S. would design an indirect-impingement weapon to take the place of the M16/M4 because it's clear that a direct-impingement mechanism has been utter disaster in reality as vs. fictional unicorn world. Just too easy for the gas tube to carry dirt that managed to blow down the barrel directly into the guts of the receiver, instant jam :(.
-- Badtux the Well-armed Penguin
BadTux, I kind of seriously doubt that the M-4 is of much use beyond 200 yards. Hell, I doubt if any infantry rifle has ever been of much use past 300 yards. The standard should be "minute of Taliban", not "minute of angle". A rifle that shoots a 10" group at 300 yards is good enough.
But it has to go "bang" every time and the M-4 has been falling short in that regard.
Of course, it would be possible to rechamber the AK-74 to .223 and get the improved muzzle velocity of the U.S. round and pretty much the same accuracy. The Russians already did it shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in an attempt to capture some of the NATO export market. That's the AK-101. Solves the problem of ammunition supply while transitioning too. But of course then you're running up against two issues: Not Invented Here, and the fact that the manufacturer of these rifles is basically bankrupt and incapable of producing them in quantity. Of course that would not prevent the U.S. government from paying Izhmash a major sum of money for the plans and licensing, and then paying Colt to produce the rifles, but then you're also running up against the problem that rifles aren't sexy to the perfumed princes who run the Pentagon, big weapons systems are sexy. They get their jollies from new choppers and artillery, not from rifles. And so the troops keep getting rifles that jam if you look at them wrong while the Pentagon remains in denial...
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