If the AK-47 is such a good gun, why does't America reverse engineer one?

Question

Just in case you don't know what "reverse engineer" means, it means to take another product (such as a competitor's) take it apart and study how it works so that a new and better rifle that has everything the AK-47 has and more can be made by America. Why dont we do that?

Answer 1

The AK-47 has only two things going for it:

It is dirt cheap
and it can be used by untrained people

It is also heavy, inaccurate, fires a worthless round, cannot be used at anything but close range etc.

Answer 2

The AK-47 isnt all that great. It has a shorter range than the M-16, is heavier, and no where near as acurate. Yes, the M-16 has some problems too. But there is a new generation of military rifle being developed that will replace the M-16 soon.

Answer 3

It is a flawed question and cannot be scientifically answered. First of all there is no such thing as "standard ammunition". A 48 gm magnum shotgun shell will recoil almost double than a 24 gm completion shell with the same gun. A heavy competition shotgun will recoil much less than a light field gun. Empirically speaking, an average single shotgun generally kicks harder than a single 7.62x52 round, an AK in full auto could be a bit trickier to control. Just my 0.02$.

Answer 4

The AK 47 and all its variants are not really a good gun. The primary reason it its seen so much is because it is cheap, fairly reliable, and the ammunition is also cheap and easy to come by. The weapon is designed to fit into the former Soviet army doctring of Massed Fires and was not designed for any long range requirements. It takes a very good marksman with a tight weapon to hit a target (even man sized) past 300 meters.

The current US assault weapons (M4, M-6A2-A4) are superior weapons for the type of marksmanship training the US soldier recieves.

Answer 5

if anything, we'd just adopt the AK-74, a later version, but the M16 has a few good points.

1. Light
2. Moderate accuracy

thats about it.
also, the war we are fighting right now doesn't call for a full size assault rifle, which is why most troops are armed with low range M-4 carbines. Tanks and air strikes are what we fight the war with, then send in a group of soldiers for cleanup.

Answer 6

If it was so good, the Russians wouldn't be building the AK-74.

The AK-47 was probably better than the first generation M-16, but now there is the M-16A4 which can do far more than the AK-47 ever could.

Answer 7

the ak is nothing special and there's no secret to it that needs to be reverse engineered. They're the most comon weapon in the world, every third world country has a pile of them, just because they're cheap easy to get ahold of, and easy to use. The M series guns has been getting alot of bad publicity, but it is a better gun than the ak's are.

Answer 8

We already have a good gun. We don't need to take apart an old Russian gun.

The AK-47 has a lot of power but isn't very accurate and its heavy. Not exactly something I would want to see used in combat.

Answer 9

All been said by others... your premise is wrong... the AK 47 is a good gun for certain situations... not for everyone... it is cheap, eazy to operate (works in shitty conditions), and can be produced with less that state of the art equipment.

But as a "gun" it is not really very good.

Answer 10

The AK has some good qualities---dependable, but it is too heavy and not that very accurate at long range. The problem with the M-16 is that it can jam if dirty and needs to cleaned everywhere you go.