AR vs AK: Let's talk about accuracy

Thanks for the test.

I couldn't hit jack with my Saiga conversion and iron sights. My eyesight isn't what it used to be, and the peeps on my Garand made a world of difference, so naturally I figured an AR would be a better choice.

I've since sold the Saiga and picked up an M&P Sport. At some point it needs to be tested for accuracy, curious how it stacks up.

One thing I will point out about the 74 vs AR, ammo availability. God forbid there is a 'SHTF' situation, all you'll have ammo-wise will be what you've stocked up. The 223 cartridge will be a lot more plentiful, plus it can be reloaded (like I do).

I'd really like to have a reliable AR with a 7.62 bullet like the AK though. Fairly slow but nearly three times the weight.
 
Good fair review & I agree,Did the same test Myself using a Stag AR-15 stock & a Saiga 308 and saiga 762x39 except all were scoped and the results were still the same as yours.The 308 is great but you have to load it light to match the barrel twist.Sure makes a great hog gun.
 
No comparison AR wins in accuracy. Regardless situation i'm a AR guy. You run a AR properly it will go through hell and back for you.

That being said there is no denying the AK's reliability. I just have don't sweet spot for a AK. Ergonomics, sights, rnds, accuracy you name it, just not a huge fan.
 
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Talking "accuracy" there is no difference. Go to any NRA Rifle Match and count the AKs. You can count them on one hand and have five fingers left over.

I put on CMP GSM and High Power clinics all the time. The CMP has a "modern rifle" category that allows AKs & SKSs, High Power allows them in the match rifle category.

Each class, guys show up with a AK or SKS, but only do it once, They come back with something else. If it's the cost of the rifle, they come back with a Mosin. If cost isn't a factor they come back with a AR. Most always go the Garand route but that's a different subject.

Even shooting at 100 yard reduced ranges, the AK/SKS aren't cutting it. But worse yet, step out to 600 or even 1000 yards.

Its not just accuracy. Look at loading in rapid fire. With the AK you have to wrestle the mag out and get another in. The AR you push a button, it falls out and you replace it. Try grabbing the magazine release, or safety without taking the rifle from your shoulder. Or ever reach up and grab some wind age or elevation.

Sorry, AKs just don't cut it in match shooting. Sure people say you can add this or that and make the AK better, but you still can't make them competitive.

Try finding a .311 bullet that you can load in an AK that will compete with the 80 or 90 Grn match bullets at 600 & 1000 yards.

Some with chime in saying the AK is good enough at close range, shooting Minute of Whatever. So is throwing rocks. Rock throwing is reliable and its accurate at close range.

Good enough,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,there is no such thing as good enough. I want a rifle that will out shoot me so I can work on my fundamentals. I want 2 MOA groups for a service rifle, not wash tub groups.

We can argue AK vs AR all day long, but when it comes to Accuracy, there is no debate.
 
With the AK you have to wrestle the mag out and get another in.
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Bit of a hyperbole isn't it?!

Sorry, AKs just don't cut it in match shooting
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Red herring argument, no one said anything about match shooting. One could argue the AR is also better for stirring bathtub gin, but that's not really the subject at hand.

So is throwing rocks. Rock throwing is reliable and its accurate at close range.
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So you can throw rocks and get 3" groups at 100 yards? And throw them at a velocity of 2400fps at that?
 
no one said anything about match shooting
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Wasn't the topic about accuracy?

AR vs AK: Let's talk about accuracy
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So you can throw rocks and get 3" groups at 100 yards? And throw them at a velocity of 2400fps at that?
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You're side stepping, along the same lines, what will the 123 grn .311 bullet do at 600 yards?

We talk about Minute of Man (size target) at 300 yards. Except on the 300 yard pop up range do you get a MOM target. In reality, if you see the target in combat, you'll be lucky to get a head size target.

With todays ARs its not un common to get cleaned targets at 200 and some at 300 yards in the rapid fire stages.

The X-10 ring on the 300 yard target is 4.56 inches across, the 9 ring is 8.56 inches. If you aren't in the 9 ring at 300, you aren't competitive. I have yet to see a AK that can keep 10 shots, rapid fire in a 9 inch circle at 300 yards, yet its common with ARs.

Even at 200 yards, I've never seen an AK clean the target and that 10 ring is 7 inches.

The topic is "accuracy". Competition is a means of measuring accuracy.
 
I'll point out one other thing.

A few years ago a friend and I attended an Appleseed shoot. I didn't have a nifty 10/22 with TechSights, so came with what was on hand, my Saiga conversion and CZ carbine.

I'll say this, trying to use that Saiga on those tiny little qual targets was an exercise in futility. My aim isn't that bad but the factory AK sights weren't up to the task. My CZ fared better but bolt actions don't work well with stand/sit/prone drills where time is of the essence and you only have five on tap.
 
Last month I was pulling targets next to a Army Reserve Soldier, he had served several tours of Iraq.

He had seen some very poorly built AK’s, he called them Egyptian, that did not function reliably. However Russian AK’s were pretty good.

We talked about accuracy. Apparently it is hard to utilize the capability of a target grade weapon when you are under fire. In fact, I got the idea, it is not possible. He agreed that the basic accuracy level of a standard AK47 was acceptable for most combat soldiers.

It is a shame, but troops do not get the amount of trigger time it takes to become outstanding shots. It gets worse in big wars, wars like WWII which have casualty rates around 2500 KIA per week. Reading American Rifleman magazines from WWII, US Combat Officers were not allowing their men to shoot at the enemy at ranges beyond 300 yards because they hardly ever hit, but would always get artillery retaliation from the enemy.

His personal rifle, one he bought for himself in the states, is a gas piston version of the AR. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was around the lines that direct impingement leaves a lot of residue in the mechanism, and he thought it undesirable.
 
Sturmgewehre,

Thank you for yet another informative video.

You can't please everyone, but you approach things the way I do and so I find your work to be particularly interesting.

BTW: Still enjoying my SCAR 16 and still developing my Gun Log app for iPhone/iOS.
 
The topic is "accuracy". Competition is a means of measuring accuracy.
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While I agree to a point, I think you have to be realistic in how you do it and make your comparisons.

Most of these things end up being a match grade target type AR against a rack grade AK (not that there is a match grade :) ). My point being, "target" shooters using tuned guns and using/wearing all their "cheats" want to compare "target" scores, against a gun thats not in the match, even with cheats.

Take a basic rack grade AR, and an AK, take away all the "cheats", and make the shooters shoot a little more realistically, then I think youll see things come a little closer to even, at realistic ranges.

Add a good red dot to both, and youll also see the gap come together. I have and shoot both, both with irons and red dots, and when I shoot them at targets with no aiming point, from improvised field positions, my hits on target are very similar with both guns.

As far as not seeing AK's at the "matches", they arent the only ones. You dont normally see FAL's, HK's, or most of the other "military" type weapons of other countries there either. In some cases, they arent even allowed. The HP and DCM/CMP type matches are normally geared towards "target" shooting with tuned, match grade, M1's, M1A's/M14's, and more of late, AR's, along with all the "gear", that I call "cheats". You dont usually see people shooting rack grade guns in their street clothes, and you usually get some pretty hard looks when you suggest it too. :)

Even at 200 yards, I've never seen an AK clean the target and that 10 ring is 7 inches.
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I shot this at 200 yards with my old SAR1 (7.62x39), using its slightly canted irons sights, and a lot of Wolf 154 grain SP's it likes. The lower group was fired from an improvised rest to confirm zero. The upper group was fried from a cross legged sittning position at a fairly steady cadence, and actually faster than I would normally shoot the rapid fire sitting position in HP. If you do the scale conversion using the rule, I think youll find the main group was around 6" (allowing for my called "flyer" when shooting). This was simply a drop into a sitting position and blast off what was in the mag.

ry%3D400


Just so you dont think it was a fluke, this was the target prior while chasing zero and getting the sights in. The fliers on both targets were my fault, and noted in both cases. This was just trying to get the sights on too, not trying to shoot "groups", other than to confirm they were consistent in where they were going....

ry%3D400
 
Most of these things end up being a match grade target type AR against a rack grade AK
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OK I might buy that to a point. Lets skip match grade guns. The CMP puts on a Small Arms Firing School at Perry, and the Eastern and Western Games.

By Rule, you have to use their guns. The guns are Military Arms Room guns, no modifications. Some, (as reported by attendees) are pure junk. Yet still produce respectable scores, much better then you can get from an AK 47 or 74. But again, that would be at 200, 300, and 600 yards.

Vietnam was a relatively short range war but Vietnam is history, not doctrine. Lets look at future wars. Desert warfare. In Iraq ranges were relatively short. Mostly urban warfare, Still, long range was needed for overwatch for patrols in the cities. (note the expanding use of snipers and designated marksman). Then we move to Afghan. As reported in last month's American Rifleman (and other sources) the average range on riflemen engaging each other is 500 yards Plus.

We found out with the M16A1 and the M193 55 grn ammo, you are limited to range. Probably 400-500 yards max. (Army Says 460). Now we use the m855 63 grn bullet that extends the range past 600. The 77 grn in the SDM Rifles extend it further to 800 or so. Yet still, we find the range of the M16 lacking. Even our sniper rifles (Army) went from 308 to 300 WM.

I'm not a fan of "ACCURATE ENOUGH" or the Minute of Man. As I mentioned Man isn't going to stand up so you can hit him at 300 yards. The army in what I believe it was the manual for the M1 has a target which represents a solder in the prone looking at you over the sights of his rifle. The "kill zone" of this target is 10 inches high. 1/4 the size of the E-Silhouette target the army uses. Much more realistic in what one would face shooting enemy troops at 300 yards.

As to the video posted by the OP. Assuming its accurate, and I have no reason to suspect it, talks about a Survival rifle. OK, lets go there.

I'm not into the SHTF BS, but there is always survival. In a survival situation we have and to eat we want to have a firearm to feed us (I think there are much better rifles for either of the two for survival). Chance are, most of what we eat will be small game. You shoot a rabbit with either rifle, you're not gonna have much for dinner unless you Head Shoot the suckers. Which would be better in that situation? That is a more realistic scenario then the SHTF crap.

One thing to take into account. If you have a rifle that you can use at extended ranges, you can shoot it at short range, the reverse isn't true.

As to accuracy, there is no comparison. Why set limits?
 
Children, children, he said "practical accuracy". He was also talking about more of a SHTF gun rather than a competition rifle. I dont need to shoot a dime sized target at 1000 yards, just a person sized target at 100 yards and in. And the AK has been doing that for almost 65 years. Please explain to me a scenario in which as a civilian, you would ever need to engage a target at 500+ yards... or anything past 100 for that matter. In fact, I cant think of a single case in recorded history where a civilian had to take a 100+ shot to neutralize a threat. It might have happed... but the odds are against it. And with the odds as they stand I would much rather have the reliability of an AK for my "precision rifle" when SHTF.
 
How's a lubed AR sitting in a closet/gun safe/case prone to failure over a AK? Reliability of the AK comes into factor when put through hash conditions, which the AR can very well do with a little slip 2000. In a so called SHTF self defense scenario i doubt either rifle is going to be in a bucket of mud/sand/water in your house.

Back on topic this discussion should be over AR win's in accuracy regardless of opinion it's fact.
 
I like reliability, and once a weapon has proven reliable then I like accuracy and precision.

I have seen many posts where people post that they are fine with a 3 MOA rifle for carbine type uses and then after they have it for a while start complaining about the accuracy and want to know which ammo will run better. (Ammo aint gonna fix it!)

So, if you (speaking rhetorically) are the type that you convince yourself that 3 MOA (or 4 or more) is alright then maybe you should slow down and really think this out. If you really know that 3 MOA is fine or 6 MOA is fine and you really know it suits your needs then great!

Because of my preference to accuracy I have never bought an AK or variant, and I am intrigued by them. Also, I love a wood Mini-14 or a Mini-30 with wood stocks, but for the same reason I have never bought one.

Again, thanks to the OP for the post and the work.
 
I agree that the AR is more accurate overall, but the AK is plenty accurate for what it was made to do and for the type of scenario he was advocating in his video. So yes, the AR wins the accuracy argument. But in reality (not the competition range), its kinda a moot point.

Off topic:
Also when referring to a SHTF scenario, its usualy in regards to some type of natural disaster, or some other reason that you will need to leave your home and fend for yourself. Alot like Katrina. So yes, in regards to the most likely of SHTF scenarios, harsh conditions will be a huge factor. And unless your first thought before you have to leave is to loot wal-mart of their cleaning gear, your AR might give you some trouble.
 
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Kancer said:
I agree that the AR is more accurate overall, but the AK is plenty accurate for what it was made to do and for the type of scenario he was advocating in his video. So yes, the AR wins the accuracy argument. But in reality (not the competition range), its kinda a moot point.
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I'm assuming this is in a HD situation? Because it most certainly applies in reality in other applications.
 
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