Not even 1,400 rounds can break an AK.
You will hear a lot of arguments these days about what the best rifles on the market are. Some gun enthusiasts can argue about AR and AK platforms until the cows come home. Russian gunmaker Kalashnikov did not take too kindly to some people trashing their AK-100 series of rifles on a prior video online.
As a result, the Russian gunmaker decided to prove a point about the reliability of Mikhail Kalashnikov's design with an AK-103 chambered in 7.62x39mm. Mainly, they want to address user Kalashnikov concerns about the rifle losing serious muzzle velocity and accuracy after only 200 rounds.
In this test, they plan to take a full auto AK-103 with an extremely high rate of fire and keep feeding it 30-round magazines until it breaks. It does not quite go the way they had planned. Mostly because the rifle does not break. In fact, the crew runs out of ammo before the rifle can ever fail!
This was one of the most impressive and entertaining torture tests of small arms we have ever seen. It was also one of the scariest as we would have likely stopped firing once that Kalashnikov AK-103 caught fire! All the polymer parts including the handguard melted completely off the gun after a few hundred rds. That is not going to help the ergonomics any. That barrel and muzzle brake were seriously sagging near the end there. The pistol grip and buttstock were still completely intact though.
We were amazed the trunnion, rotating bolt, bolt carrier, and trigger assembly were completely intact after something like that. If there is one thing we can say about Russia, they know how to build a reliable firearm. The way he bashed that gun on the table would have likely destroyed many other rifles.
The only thing we wished we could have seen were the crew scrambling to reload magazines after they realized the gun was going to cross the 900-round threshold they had prepared for initially. If you were ever concerned about an AK's reliability, it seems you have little to worry about.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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