The klashkinov (correct spelling?) family of rifles will be around for ages.... doesn't matter if it was made by Russians, Chinese, Koreans or Martian's... the simple fact is that its easy to make... even easier to use and can take a lot of punishment and use when being used....
this hasn't been mentioned yet but the rifle is mostly used to terrorists, African militia groups, activist middle eastern groups etc etc etc not normally by modern day military... MOST of the people in these groups have very little schooling or education and virtually no training... there is no point giving complex rifles with scopes or other gadgets to starving African militia or pirates who are high on drugs most days of the week if they cant even figure out how to turn the safety off and are going to fire off rounds (9 times out of 10) from the hip on fully auto and hope they hit something... also these people don't grasp the concept of weapon cleaning... Im in the military and we use the IW Styer as our primary weapon and for training exercises we can fire off a few hundred rounds if we're lucky without cleaning them and then the weapon packs a shit... and i mean really packs a shit... its virtually unusable and takes hours to clean... the AK has very few moving parts... considerably less than modern assault rifles so it doesn't need as much regular cleaning and jam's less often...
the AK will be around for ages because it suits these peoples needs... its cheap, any idiot can use it and they is an abundance available... if the groups i mentioned above changed to using complex US or euro weapons they would struggle... initially at least...
this hasn't been mentioned yet but the rifle is mostly used to terrorists, African militia groups, activist middle eastern groups etc etc etc not normally by modern day military... MOST of the people in these groups have very little schooling or education and virtually no training... there is no point giving complex rifles with scopes or other gadgets to starving African militia or pirates who are high on drugs most days of the week if they cant even figure out how to turn the safety off and are going to fire off rounds (9 times out of 10) from the hip on fully auto and hope they hit something... also these people don't grasp the concept of weapon cleaning... Im in the military and we use the IW Styer as our primary weapon and for training exercises we can fire off a few hundred rounds if we're lucky without cleaning them and then the weapon packs a shit... and i mean really packs a shit... its virtually unusable and takes hours to clean... the AK has very few moving parts... considerably less than modern assault rifles so it doesn't need as much regular cleaning and jam's less often...
the AK will be around for ages because it suits these peoples needs... its cheap, any idiot can use it and they is an abundance available... if the groups i mentioned above changed to using complex US or euro weapons they would struggle... initially at least...