The initial design that would become the AK-47 was born out of the Second World War. Kalashnikov, a self-taught mechanical tinkerer, imagined the weapon while in a hospital recovering from wounds. The weapon was his answer to the superior rifles used by the Nazis.
Kalashnikov entered his plans for the simple yet effective weapon into a Soviet competition. By 1947, the design was complete. By 1949 the Soviet Army had a new standard. This led to the name “Automatic Kalashnikov 1947” or AK-47.
The weapon is celebrated for its simplicity (involving only 8 moving parts), cheap manufacturing process (mostly metal stamping), and reliability in almost any terrain.
The more complicated the gun, the more likely it will be to jam. Therefore, a challenge of weapons design is to create a fast, accurate, high capacity firearm with as few moving parts as possible. In this, the AK-47 is hard to match. It has stood the test of time.
The success of this design has led to it being distributed more widely than all of its direct competitors combined. Kalashnikov has said that “This is a weapon of defense… It is not a weapon for offense.” However, the use of this weapon has not always been as Kalashnikov had intended.
The weapon has been used by a long list of criminals, freedom fighters, armies, terrorists, and most regrettably child soldiers. Not many guns are brandished upon a country’s flag, however the AK-47 is seen upon the flag of Mozambique for the role it took in aiding the countries’ guerrilla fight against the Portuguese.
Though we may not like the ways that the AK-47 has been used, the engineering behind it is impressive.