Is the AK-47 really that reliable? Myth and reality of the Kalashnikov rifle and its variants

"Bury it in mud, pull it out and it still fires."

Anyone who has taken even a passing interest in the history of twentieth-century weapons has heard something like this about the AK-47. The rifle designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov has become the emblem of absolute reliability: a weapon that always works, anywhere, no matter what.

But is that really so? In the article on the condom over the M16 muzzle we saw how much trouble Vietnam's mud gave the American rifle. Here we try the same exercise with its great rival: separating fact from legend.

A note: this is an article of history and analysis. I discuss design choices in general terms, without operational technical details.

A short history

The sergeant and the rifle

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (1919-2013) was a Red Army tank sergeant, wounded in 1941. While convalescing he began working on weapon design. After the war his design won a competition for a new assault rifle, and in 1949 the weapon was adopted by the Soviet army as the AK, Avtomat Kalashnikova. The number 47 refers to the year of the model.

The new rifle used an intermediate cartridge, 7.62×39 mm: less powerful than that of traditional rifles, but sufficient for infantry fighting at realistic distances, and suited to automatic fire.

Copied from the Germans?

This is one of the most frequent questions. The German StG 44 assault rifle, used in the Second World War, certainly influenced the concept: an individual weapon firing an intermediate cartridge, capable of automatic fire. But the AK's internal mechanism is different, and specialists agree in regarding it as a distinct design.

More debated is the role of the German designer Hugo Schmeisser, the creator of the StG 44, who was taken to the Soviet Union after the war and worked in Izhevsk, the very city where AKs were produced, until the early 1950s. Some speculate that he contributed to the design or its industrialisation. On the current evidence this is an unproven hypothesis: no documents attribute to Schmeisser a role in designing the AK.

A weapon that changed the world

According to the most widely cited estimates, more than 100 million AK-family rifles have been produced since 1949, in over thirty countries. The AK has ended up in the hands of regular armies, guerrillas, armed groups and criminals on every continent, and it even appears on the flag of Mozambique.

Kalashnikov himself lived with this legacy with mixed feelings. In May 2012, a year and a half before he died, he wrote a letter to the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, later published by the newspaper Izvestia, in which he spoke of "unbearable spiritual pain" over the deaths caused by his weapon.

The main variants

Then there are the versions produced around the world, under licence or not: the Chinese Type 56, the Yugoslav and Serbian Zastava models, and Romanian, Hungarian, Polish and Egyptian ones. Some countries developed their own derivatives: the Finnish Valmet RK 62 and the Israeli Galil, which drew on the Finnish design.

An important point, which comes back in the discussion of reliability: with so many manufacturers, quality varies enormously. A carefully made AK from a state factory and a workshop copy share a name, not necessarily the same reliability.

Why the AK is reputed to be rugged

The AK's reputation did not come from nowhere. It stems from specific design choices, linked to the kind of army it was designed for: a mass army of conscripts trained in a hurry, who had to fight from the Siberian frost to the desert.

The bottom line is this: the AK trades accuracy for ruggedness. It is a deliberate compromise, not a flaw. For Soviet doctrine, a rifle that always fires at 300 metres was worth more than a very accurate rifle that jams at the first downpour.

The myth put to the test: mud tests

Here we reach the heart of the question. Does the AK really always work, even when plunged into mud?

In recent years some independent tests have tried to answer systematically. The best known are those by the InRange TV channel of Ian McCollum and Karl Kasarda, weapons history specialists, who put several rifles, including an AK and a civilian AR-15, the semi-automatic version of the M16, through mud immersion trials.

The results surprised many:

• the AK suffered no mechanical breakage, but mud and sand in the mechanism slowed the moving parts until the rifle could not complete its cycle, and it stopped;
• in the comparison with the AR-15, the AR performed better in that particular test;
• according to McCollum, the reason is structural: the AR-15 is more sealed, while the AK has larger openings through which mud, especially mixed with sand and debris, can get into the mechanism.

In fairness, these are limited tests, on a few examples and in specific conditions, not large-scale statistical studies. But the message is clear, and it is summed up by a line quoted in the commentary on the tests: "Every gun has a failure point, you just have to reach it."

The investigator's lesson. A reputation built on decades of stories is not proof. Soldiers' testimony is valuable, but it has to be compared with controlled tests. And tests, in turn, must be read for what they show: a result under specific conditions, not a universal truth.

So where does the legend come from?

If the AK is not invincible, why is the idea that it is so deeply rooted? There are several reasons.

1. Genuine ruggedness

The AK really is a weapon that tolerates poor maintenance, wear and use by poorly trained people. In many conflicts it has been used for years by fighters who almost never cleaned it, and it kept working. This, more than mud, is the real foundation of its reputation.

2. The comparison with the early M16

In the early years of the Vietnam War, as we have seen, the American M16 rifle suffered serious jamming problems, caused by a change of propellant, a non-chromed chamber and a lack of cleaning kits. Next to a weapon that let soldiers down at decisive moments, the ruggedness of the AK used by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong seemed almost miraculous. The AK's legend was also born of its adversary's bad reputation.

3. Simplicity

A weapon anyone can quickly learn to use and strip seems, in itself, more reliable. Ease of use and ruggedness have merged in the popular imagination.

4. Film, video games and propaganda

Finally, decades of films, video games and propaganda, both Soviet and from the guerrilla movements that made it a symbol, have turned a good rifle into a myth.

The AK as evidence: the OSINT analyst's view

There is one last aspect, which concerns my own work closely. Precisely because AKs are everywhere, they have become one of the objects most studied by analysts working with open sources in conflicts.

Markings, construction details and differences between models produced in different countries allow those who can read them to trace the origin of a weapon photographed in a war zone and, sometimes, to reconstruct illicit supply chains. The Small Arms Survey, a research centre based in Geneva, published in 2015 a guide to documenting small arms that devotes a section specifically to AK-family rifles, the weapons most often found in conflict zones.

It is an example of how a photograph, analysed methodically, can become evidence. I wrote about this more generally in the article on what an OSINT analyst does.

In short

The AK-47 is not a magic weapon. It is a successful design, conceived with great consistency for a precise goal: to work in the hands of poorly trained soldiers, in the worst conditions, with minimal maintenance. In this it has been extraordinarily successful, for better and for worse. But the line "bury it in mud and it fires" belongs more to legend than to history.

Main sources: InRange TV mud tests, discussed by The Firearm Blog (2015) and Recoil, with explanations by I. McCollum; NPR, on M. Kalashnikov's letter to Patriarch Kirill (2014); We Are The Mighty, on AK-47 myths and facts; Athlon Outdoors, on the history of the variants; Small Arms Survey, N. R. Jenzen-Jones, Documenting Small Arms and Light Weapons: A Basic Guide (Issue Brief 14, 2015).