O
ld and proven AK rifle
was designed to com-
bat enemy personnel
at around 300 meters distance.
The tactics of its era were essen-
tially run and shoot burst during
the assault or in the trench war-
fare. Mikhail Kalashnikov did not
focus on quick and accurate single
fire – that was the role of sharp-
shooters with the 7.62 Dragunov
SVD semi-automatic sniper (DMR)
rifle. If you want to find out more
about the shooting techniques for
AK as they were, please familiarize
yourself with… current Polish Land
Forces shooting training tech-
niques where still threats should
be eliminated with short bursts and
the accurate single fire shooting
will result in bad scores.
The most common competitor of
the AK is the US M16 rifle designed
a couple years later. It is totally dif-
ferent from its Soviet counterpart –
different operation, different round,
but the time it was developed was
similar. Over the years, the M16
and its derivatives were modified
and upgraded for improved perfor-
mance. Nowadays, the M16 and its
variants and clones are most com-
mon SOF rifles and shooting com-
petition rifles. Of course, the AK
platform was also modified (first
there were AKM, then complete
5.45x39 AK74 family and now im-
proved AK100-series, etc.), but the
common rifle available in the West-
ern World is a clone of AK/AKM in
7.62x39.
EX-POLSOF
MODS BY
AK
S T O R Y B Y : W O J C I E C H „ Ł A S U C H " Ł A C N Y
P H O T O S : M I C H A L B A R T O S I E W I C Z , A U T O R
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