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What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - 727Sky - 04-14-2025
Interesting insights on firearms in Ukraine
RE: What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - sailorsam - 04-14-2025
(04-14-2025, 06:43 AM)727Sky Wrote: Interesting insights on firearms in Ukraine
interresting info, thanks
I wonder how many AK47s are still floating around
saw a pic early in the war of some Uke partisans with Mosin-Nagants!
RE: What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - Ninurta - 04-14-2025
Nice, informative video!
'
I much prefer my AR to an M-4, but that's a personal choice, for personal reasons. I don't need full-auto. It's usually just a waste of ammo, and as the video points out, running out of ammo in a fight leaves one with a bad sinking feeling. All full auto is really good for is keeping heads down during maneuvering, Hollywood notwithstanding. I've never seen anyone mow down charging hordes with an AR, despite what you see in the movies. In a pinch, I can twitch my trigger finger fast enough to make the other guy reconsider sticking his head up, and it's not in danger of pushing the selector too far and dumping a magazine in a panic.
Also, the M-4 has that ridiculous step-cut about half way between the front sight base and the muzzle, put there for mounting grenade launchers. I don't have grenade launcher, and I don't need that stupid cut ringing the barrel. I don't see how that cutout can avoid screwing up the barrel harmonics and throwing shots wild. As the pressure wave from the shot moves down the barrel behind the bullet, it would just about have to hiccup when it hits that lower strength area (because there is less barrel at that point) and whip the barrel some. Don't need it, ain't having it.
My AR has a heavy barrel, because that's what was available that didn't have the cutout in it. It adds some weight, but it also adds some stability. Life is full of trade-offs. The barrel is stamped "5.56 NATO 1/9". That means it is chambered for full power NATO ammo,which has more oompf and therefore more pressure than the comparable .223. You can safely shoot .223 in a 5.56 chamber, but the reverse is not true. The .223 chambers are not proofed for 5.56 pressures, although the chambers have virtually the same inside dimensions.
The "1/9" in the barrel stamp means it has one twist in 9" of barrel length. I know the video says 1/8 is "ideal", but I've not found that to be true, personally. It's too close to the M-4 twist of 1/7, and so to my mind is weighted towards the NATO M855 ammo with the 62 grain bullets. Original M16's had a 1/14 twist, which was too slow and failed to stabilize the bullets. Made for some spectacular wounds from tumbling bullets, but had a negative impact on accuracy. Later, M16A1's settled on a 1/12 twist for the older M193 cartridges,which had a lighter 55 grain bullet. I've found the 1/9 twist to be more suitable as a compromise between the two, but that's just MY mileage - your mileage may vary. I use both M855 and M193, with good results from the same barrel.
For geegaws and gadgets, I put a red dot sight (co-sited with the iron sights) on it, a green laser, and a flashlight. The red dot sight wasn't suitable for hard work. Set screws would tend to back out under fire and it would lose zero, which necessitated a switch under pressure to the iron sights. The green laser was a joke. Sure, I could throw a dot out there, but that just alerted the opposition that it was being targeted, which is generally a bad idea unless you are just trying to buffalo him. Worse, the green laser was visible, and could be tracked all the way back to ME, giving away my position. It was basically useless, and even worse, dangerous. So I got rid of the red dot sight and just clamped on an old style carry handle with built-in iron (peep) sights, and ditched the laser altogether. Kept the flashlight, though, because it was handy. It has two switches on the thumb pad, one to keep it on and one that just turns it on when my thumb is on it, and off when my thumb is removed.
The flashlight paid for itself one dark night after the hurricane came through and killed all the electricity. One night a few days into the blackout, about 5 AM, some jackass decided that screwing around with my car was a good idea. I reckon he figured it was dark, so how would anyone be able to see him? It caused him to re-assess his life priorities to get spotlighted by a weapon mounted flashlight while all he could see was a blinding glare. He left a brown streak all the way down the road getting away from there.
Dude in the video was right about the adjustable stocks. It's handy to be able to make the stock shorter to fit heavy winter clothes or other accouterments like ammo vests or armor.
One other change on my AR that I made was to switch the factory handguards out for M-4 handguards. That barrel gets HOT in just a little time, and the factory handguards had no aluminum heat shields in them, whereas the government M-4 handguards have double heat shields - an advantage with sustained fire over time.
I dunno much about that AK-12, but can't figure out why Russia felt a need to "improve" on the perfection of the AK-74. Sometimes, change just for the sake of change is a step backwards. With an AK-74, running a 45 round RPK-74 magazine in it, I can dump all 45 rounds into a 6 inch circle at 25 meters on rock and roll. in about 4 1/2 seconds I didn't even have to grip the fore-end - it would just lay in the flat of my hand and purr until it ran dry. No climb at all, thanks to that ingenious muzzle brake on the AK-74. Can't do that with an M-4, as there is bound to be some muzzle climb and "walk" with the M-4 flash hider. That flash hider is good for what it was designed for, but it wasn't designed for muzzle stability.
I hate that my AK-74 got stolen, and the ATF was not at all interested in recovering it. I reckon the Obama DoJ of the time was prioritizing more guns for cartels in "Fast and Furious" than it was prioritizing having stolen guns on the loose. The joke was on the thieves - I had pulled out the bolt, since AK bolts are so easy to pull out, and had the bolt in my pocket when the gun was stolen. Good luck trying to get a 5.45 AK bolt imported into the US to replace it with. That gun likely never fired a shot again.
I'm not real big on the older AK-47's and AKM's. They're fine, reliable weapons, but the 7.62x39 ammo is a problem for me. Too underpowered for the weight of it you have to carry. It has a more "looping" trajectory, more like a .30-30, so it's a good brush-buster at close range, but less good for longer range shots. The 5.45x39.5 7N6 AK-74 ammo shoots flatter farther out, and is lighter to carry around. Plus it has that hollow cavity in the nose which causes it to go unstable and tumble on impact, rather than in flight. I dug some slugs out of an oak slab I'd fired them into, and most of them were pointed 180 degrees away from where they were pointed at impact. If it will do that in OAK, imagine how it will act in softer flesh! I actually shot a small tree down, about 5 or 6" through, with that ammo. 15 rounds or so completely severed the tree.
No wonder the Afghans called that bullet the "poison bullet" - anyone hit with one rarely made it to medical aid.
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RE: What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - Ninurta - 04-14-2025
(04-14-2025, 11:05 AM)sailorsam Wrote: interresting info, thanks
I wonder how many AK47s are still floating around
saw a pic early in the war of some Uke partisans with Mosin-Nagants!
Something like 34 million of them were made just by Russia and by countries under license to Russia, which is not even counting the clones made in the US in recent years, so there are still a goodly number of them floating around. They are damned near indestructible, so even old ones from 70 years ago are still ticking away in war zones world-wide.
At one time, Africa was so flooded with AK-47's and AKMs that you could purchase one for a sack of corn, or about $6.00.
My son still uses a Mosin-Nagant, WWII vintage, to deer hunt with, and swears by it. I wouldn't want to get into a fire-fight with him and that rifle no matter what I was carrying. Hits count more than any amount of full-auto noise, and one thing he can do with that rifle is hit what he wants to hit! It will reach out, reach out and TOUCH a target, meaning his arms are longer than anyone carrying an AR-15's arms. They can make a lot of noise and fury, but that doesn't matter so much if they can't get close enough to make it count without getting themselves perforated by a dinosaur.
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RE: What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - sailorsam - 04-15-2025
(04-14-2025, 06:48 PM)Ninurta Wrote:the Moist Nugget was used as a sniper rifle in the Viet Nam conflict. definite reach there.(04-14-2025, 11:05 AM)sailorsam Wrote: interresting info, thanks
I wonder how many AK47s are still floating around
saw a pic early in the war of some Uke partisans with Mosin-Nagants!
Something like 34 million of them were made just by Russia and by countries under license to Russia, which is not even counting the clones made in the US in recent years, so there are still a goodly number of them floating around. They are damned near indestructible, so even old ones from 70 years ago are still ticking away in war zones world-wide.
At one time, Africa was so flooded with AK-47's and AKMs that you could purchase one for a sack of corn, or about $6.00.
My son still uses a Mosin-Nagant, WWII vintage, to deer hunt with, and swears by it. I wouldn't want to get into a fire-fight with him and that rifle no matter what I was carrying. Hits count more than any amount of full-auto noise, and one thing he can do with that rifle is hit what he wants to hit! It will reach out, reach out and TOUCH a target, meaning his arms are longer than anyone carrying an AR-15's arms. They can make a lot of noise and fury, but that doesn't matter so much if they can't get close enough to make it count without getting themselves perforated by a dinosaur.
.
RE: What Rifle is being used in Ukraine - 727Sky - 04-15-2025
Way back when, I had 2 AK-47s for hog hunting in jungle/thicker brush. It was a good hard hitting weapon out to about 125 yards but after that you might as well be throwing rocks as the bullet drop was bad and just got worse the further out. 5.56 at 327yds was doable with a couple of my rigs but a 7.62x39 round was just about useless if you wanted to hit within a 5 inch spot IMO. One of my AKs had the red star and was an actual Russian made Soviet Union rifle. As far as I was concerned the SKS shot tighter groups.