Easiest to Maintain Battle Rifle?

H

Higgins

New member
Say you are out in the field, foreign country battling bad guys with only one rifle and just basic cleaning materials. What's the easiest battle rifle to maintain and keep functioning - i.e. what's the hardiest battle rifle, past or present? The one that would require minimal attention and could be used, abused and yet still relied upon to function?

Garand? Ak? AR-15/M-16? FAL? CETME/G3?
 
my vote would have to go to the FAL. You can carry an extra complete bolt that will headspace to the rifle. Change it out in less than a minute. Has a fixed ejector that hardly fails. Fire control group is easy to replace,no punches or drift needed.Its a simple rifle to maintain.
 
AK-47

Maintenance? What's that? :D

About the only "maintenance" those things really require is reloading.

This one's not even close, IMO.
 
AK-47

To me the AK-47 is the most reliable and toughest semi-auto so far. The next is an SKS. I would feel more comfortable with an AK than an SKS.
 
I agree with Bob and Moon...AK47...Is there a maintenance manual. just blow the dust off and kick the rust off...
 
AK-47/SKS, with a close runner up being a .303 British Enfield.

Among the most difficult? Any of the French Lebel/Chauterault/Betherier series.

Getting the bolt apart and out of the gun for maintenance requires a SCREWDRIVER.
 
AK style rifles are undoubtedly the most reliable rifles available, but I've never particularly liked the AK's. I'd go with a Galil in 7.62 NATO if I could.
 
HK91,
Two push pins for the stock one for the trigger mechanism blam it all comes apart. The only bad thing is cleaning the chamber area where the bolt rollers lock into place.
 
Not to argue that it isn't the AK, but a friend who served as a senior sargeant in the Danish army used and trained men extensively with the G3. His experience was that it took hundreds and hundreds of rounds before the chamber junk inhibited cycling. At that point they put a dab of lip balm on a cartridge shoulder and fired it. The lip balm blew the crud out of the chamber flutes and the rifle continued to operate normally for many more rounds.

I understand that the French issued bullpup rifle (another delayed blowback design) is also incredibly reliable.

While neither might reach the level of reliability of the AK, they get close while being much, much more accurate.
 
The M1/M14 types are not bad in the field, as real world testing has shown. Dirt can get in easily, but comes out easy also, something not true of rifles with closed in receivers.

One piece of info may be of interest. Just before one of their wars, Israel rearmed their front line troops, replacing reworked K.98k's with brand new FAL's. Their troops, as troops will do, either rode into battle on tanks or followed the tanks to take advantage of the cover. Naturally, they were swallowed in clouds of dust.

When it came time to open the ball, the Israeli troops took aim and fired. Some FAL's wouldn't go off, others fired the one round in the pipe and quit.

So the Israelis, in great secrecy, pulled back the FAL's and re-issued the (you guessed it) K.98k to front line troops. Then, with typical Israeli "hutzpah", they gave the FAL's to reserve units and told the press that they now had so many of the new rifles that they could even arm reserves with them.

The K.98k didn't care about sand, dirt, mud, cold, heat or anything else; it just went bang when needed.

Jim
 
This subject has been beaten to death, but my vote would have
to go for something in the Kalashnikov family (AK/Israeli Galil/
Finnish Valmet/etc.). My only qualm would be as to which caliber
to take- 7.62x39, 5.45x39, etc....and that is based on how much
ammo I can carry and how available it is in said area.

ANM
 
I would carry whatever firearm that my unit assigns and supplies ammo for. Has anyone been in a firefight and seen how fast 400-800 rounds of ammo can dissapear?

As for durability, this year I have seen 20-year old AKs still being carried in SE Asia. I don't remember seeing that many cleaning kits.
 
Okay, so AK's seem to be the poplular vote for most durable/reliable semi-auto combat type rifle. What is it about the AK's design (gas system, bolt, ?) that makes it so reliable and tough?

Also, if the AK design is so good, then why doesn't someone figure out a way to make AK's more accurate? Or is there something inherent in the AK design which makes improving accuracy prohibitive? Seems to me that a gun with that high a quality of reliability/durability should have it's accuracy problems addressed to make it a all around excellent weapon.
 
Gas system and looser parts

The AK-47 was the first semi-auto rifle to have looser parts, and it also has fewer parts than most other semi's, I dont know what else made it so much more reliable. I don't know why Mikhail hasn't tried to improve accuracy. He might of but I haven't heard about it.
 
There hasn't been much need for accuracy improvement over/cost & durability.

Soviet thinking always had been to make things durable, easy and cheap.

Why improve on something you can already hand to a 16 year old insurgent and have him kill a well-trained spec-ops guy from 100-200 yards out?
 
They have improved AK type models made by the Russians all based on the Kalashnikov gas operated design. The company name now eludes me (Izhmash?) but I have seen a special on The History Channel that just details Mikhail and the Kalashnikov design and legacy. It talked about the new models based on the old design.
more info and cool stuff can be found at

http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/
 
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