The AK47 was apparently designed to be used with as little sevicing that it could get away with by your average everyday revolutionary – whereas the SA80 suffers from being designed by scientists in a clean atmosphere laboratory!
I have been told that the AK47 could be extracted from the bottom of a swamp and fired, whereas the SA80 would need to be cleaned if it was accidentally dropped in a shallow puddle or (and the chap who told me this might not have been as unbiased as perhaps he should have been) if operated in fog or mist.
The AK47 is fine to spray bullets from the hip – but the SA80 was designed to be used like the FN SLR it replaced from the shoulder. You should be able to replace the magazine on the SA80 with it balanced and aimed from your shoulder – not something to do with your AK47.
The Royal Marines hate the SA80 – I can believe that they would, in Iraq, re-equipe themselves with AK47s at the drop of a hat. I never did get to photograph them using the gun on an artic live fire exercise because there were so many in the unit down – and that was over the space of 4 days.
The SBS, like the SAS, won’t use the SA80; any marine who chose one as his personal weapon would be, quote, “returned to his original unit for being mentally unsound”, end quote, according to a training sergeant.
Just because a gun has been around for years doesn’t make it any less usable – look at the Colt.45.
Next question? – Nermal
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