The Reliable Killer

AK-47
The Weapon That
Changed the Face of WarBy Larry Kahaner
Wiley — 258pp — $25.95 

 

Here’s today’s puzzler: Name a Russian innovation that whips most everything America and Western Europe throws against it, has astounding firepower, and is unaffected by heat, cold, and sand. It’s the Kalashnikov assault rifle, also known as the AK. Since its first large-scale production in 1947, this low-tech weapon of mass destruction has spread across the globe, doling out death from Afghanistan to the
U.S.

The AK has become the firearm of choice for at least 50 standing armies and uncounted ragtag outfits, from insurgents and terrorists to drug dealers and street gangs.

 

For inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov, inspiration came in 1941 in the form of direct contact with Nazi invaders’ Schmeisser submachine guns. As the young tank commander recovered from his wounds, he vowed to create a weapon that would help defend the motherland. However, it took him years of tinkering, along with technical schooling, to perfect his brainchild, the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947.

 

It was in
Vietnam, Kahaner tells us, that the AK really earned its stripes. In jungle skirmishes, whoever pumped out the most rounds in the shortest amount of time won.
America countered with its own automatic, the space-age-sleek M-16. But for years that rifle was reputed to have problems. One story, plucked by Kahaner from the
Vietnam memoir of Colonel David Hackworth, illustrates the issues. Hackworth came across an accidentally exposed Viet Cong gravesite, yanked out a mud-caked AK, pulled back the bolt, and fired off thirty rounds as if the gun had just been cleaned. “This was the kind of weapon our solders needed and deserved, not the M-16 that had to be hospital cleaned or it would jam,” wrote Hackworth.

 

Kalashnikov culture also spread to
Latin America, beginning with the Nicaraguan Contra war of the 1980s. Again the
U.S. helped spread the epidemic, as Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North’s secret White House project shipped thousands of AKs to the counterrevolutionaries. Soon, “just as it had done in the Middle East and Africa, the indestructible and cheap AK worked its way from country to country, turning small conflicts into large wars” in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia.

 

Today the AK’s place in civilization seems clear. In 2004, the Iraqi army, trained by the
U.S. military, nixed American-made M-16s and insisted on being issued AKs. That same year, Playboy issued its list of “50 Products That Changed the World.” Near the top–beaten out by only the Apple (AAPL ) Macintosh, the pill, and the Sony (SNE ) Betamax–was the AK, the embodiment of innovation’s dark side.