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AK47 assault rifle inventor Kalashnikov dies at 94
- brudgers 13y agoIn the abstract, the Kalshnikov is interesting as a design which scaled well and that provided the right set of design trade-offs to remain a viable choice among small arms for more than half a century.
- dingaling 13y agoIndeed! By accounts Korobov's 1946 rival ( the TKB-408 ) was technically more sophisticated with more potential, but that ensnared it during testing and the AK passed. Excellence vs good enough. Ten years later Korobov tried again with the 517 rifle, but again Kalashnikov prevailed with the AKM because of its commonality with the vast installed-base of AKs.
- walshemj 13y agoSTUG 44 was the inspiration for the AK though
- varjag 13y ago> By accounts Korobov's 1946 rival ( the TKB-408 ) was technically more sophisticated with more potential, but that ensnared it during testing and the AK passed. Excellence vs good enough. TKB was prone to jams and had worse accuracy than the AK prototype. It also looked ugly. So the better design won, although it sounds dull ;)
- mavhc 13y agoIf only more people created more efficient weapons the world would be a better place
- GFischer 13y agoI want more efficient nonlethal weapons.. why is it such a small fraction of weapons research?
- pavel_lishin 13y agoThere is a trade-off, there, however. Someone is more likely to use a non-lethal weapon than a lethal one, including police, etc - but non-lethal weapons are still very intimidating. With enough non-lethal weapons, it might make abuse of government power more likely, not less - training mace sprays and tazers on protesters is more acceptable than just mowing them down with bullets, but disperses crowds just as well.
- Glide 13y agoI shudder at the thought that something like the Civil Rights movement would have been stopped if the police had better non-lethal weapons.
- wrongc0ntinent 13y agoAnother funny side effect of non-lethal weapons is very likely testimony against the perpetrator, by the victim.
- ufmace 13y agoIt's pretty tough to reliably stop/disable somebody without at least a risk of killing them. Tasers still kill people every now and then, and their effectiveness is low enough that police usually only use them against unarmed people or with lots of backup armed with lethal weapons.
- steauengeglase 13y agoNapoleon changed war with interchangeable people. Eli Whitney changed war with interchangeable parts. Kalashnikov changed war with interchangeable nations.
- mpg33 13y agoTitle is slightly misleading...he invented the widely used AK-47. The first assault rifle was the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44) invented by the Germans during WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44#Legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44#Legacy
- inanov 13y agomay he rest in peace
- waterlesscloud 13y agoHe's holding like the Cadillac of AK-47s in that pic.
- cynwoody 13y agoIs that an AK-74? Bin Laden's favorite weapon?
- bhousel 13y agoWow, one of 18 children?
- johansch 13y agoI wonder how many were killed by this thing? BS guess: 200 million? (2 per produced rifle according to wikipedia)
- larrik 13y agoMy own BS guess: 2 per produced rifle seems extremely high to me. I think .2 per produced rifle would still be high.
- mtdewcmu 13y agoI agree, that number does sound kind of high. The number of deaths per rifle would likely follow a heavy-tail distribution: a few rifles would have extremely high numbers, and most would be have extremely low numbers. So the average would be a lot higher than the median. That doesn't rule out 2/rifle on average as a possibility. But the average is a misleading statistic if you're talking about the common case.
- bsamuels 13y agoI think you're drastically overestimating how much action weapons see. Consider the amount of rifles belonging to collectors, military, how many are used in training, how many are in weapons stockpile. Maybe 1 in 5 rifles have even been used in action. Probably 1 in 5 of those rifles have ever hit someone. It's going to be a number several orders of magnitude lower than 200 million that's for sure.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoEven 2 million people is a loss of life hard for me to comprehend. The only way I can come to terms with that number is by thinking of it like: If I meet one new person each day, then I'll meet about 1000 people every three years. If I die 30 years from now, then I'll have met 10k people. In that circumstance, 2 million people is 200x more souls than I'll meet in the rest of my life. I'd have to meet two hundred new people each and every day for 30 years. Kind of strange trying to wrap my head around such numbers. Maybe nonsensical looking at it that way, but it's the only way to look at it that hits me how each of these people who died were people with hopes and dreams and fears and loves. Some of those people were vicious wild animals; others may have been poets caught in a bad situation.
- yawz 13y agoWe live in a strange world. I guess because we are a strange species. Humans have been good at killing (each other) since the dawn of time (well... since we were able push, hit, bite, etc. each other). So I don't doubt that if it wasn't for AK-47 then something else would have taken its place but it is, nonetheless, a very creepy thing to have your name becoming popular thanks to the one of the most popular killing tools/machines out there.
- smokinjoe 13y agoReminds me of Mr. Gatling, although I don't think Mr. Kalashnikov thought his invention would bring about World Peace.
- saraid216 13y agoAccording to TallGuyShort's comment, he thought it could be used for defensive violence and was pained at the thought it was being used for offensive violence.
- _delirium 13y agoHe did mention in an interview once that he wished he had become famous for inventing an agricultural machine instead: "Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer. I always wanted to construct agricultural machinery." Quoted in this artice: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/12/23/mikhail_kalashnikov_designer_of_ak47_rifle_dead_at_94.html http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/12/23/mikhail_kalashn...
- k-mcgrady 13y agoThe BBC article I read on this mentioned something similar although it was more along the lines of he said didn't make any money from the gun, he would have been better off (made more money) by designing a lawn mower.
- _delirium 13y agoI'm pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with the money, but his desire to improve production rather than destruction. Here's an article with the lawn-mower comment you're thinking of: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/30/russia.kateconnolly http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/30/russia.kateconn... Another comment of his (quoted in the thestar.com article above) suggests that he didn't think much of making money from inventions: "At that time in our country patenting inventions wasn't an issue. We worked for Socialist society, for the good of the people, which I never regret".
- tlear 13y agoAK47 is a masterpiece of design, I bet it will still be in wide use when all of the people reading this are long dead.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoI'm biased by being a gun enthusiast and AK-variant owner myself, but I quite admire him as an engineer. It is an excellent design: simple, robust, time-proven, and easy to manufacture. Always a shame when great engineering is shadowed by violence, however. He has said that it should have been a weapon of defense, not offense. "It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon".
- dharmach 13y agoHow a gun as a weapon of defense differs from a one used as a weapon of offense, from design perspective? Or there are no differences in design?
- lmm 13y agoAt a civilian level, AIUI law enforcement and the like tend to prefer shorter-range, more accurate weapons than the AK47. In a war situation I'm not sure how much difference there is.
- aaronem 13y agoDepends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at least decent accuracy at medium to long range, so that on a battlefield you can shoot the fellow who's trying to shoot you while he's still a couple hundred meters thataway, with the sort of concentrated firepower previously only available from a machine gun proper, so that you can clear rooms in house-to-house fighting and otherwise deal with close-in situations which call for more firepower than a semi-automatic battle rifle can provide.
- yogo 13y agoWhether you are defending or attacking a gun's function is to fire rounds and kill or injure the target. With the exception of certain scenarios like riots, it gets that job done, and that's why armed forces, swat teams, and gangbangers all use them.
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- pearjuice 13y agoI wonder what his thoughts were on his rifle being the cause of so many deaths.
- danohuiginn 13y agoTo be honoured by a 100-million-gun salute? I'd highly recommend "The Gun", a history of the Kalashnikov by New York Times journalist CJ Chivers. [his blog and articles are also excellent]. Kalashnikov-like guns are maybe comparable to the shipping container: relatively simple mass-produced objects that have transformed the world in all kinds of ways. Kalashnikov the man was only a small part of that (he was more figurehead than sole creator).
- dclowd9901 13y agoInteresting comparison, as shipping containers may also be used for nefarious purposes the world over, but it's not a thought that immediately comes to mind unless it's invited by comparing them with a cheaply mass-produced gun.
- brudgers 13y agoThe difference between shipping containers and small arms is obvious. The potential for causing grave bodily injury and death is part and parcel of the primary intended use of a Kalashnikov. Other uses are simply byproducts. The design and intended use of a shipping container stands in exactly the opposite relationship to the means of delivering violence.
- dclowd9901 13y agoI was just thinking aloud, rather than trying to make a compelling point. Just because the differences are obvious doesn't mean that the end use of a shipping container can't negatively affect a massive amount of people.
- sitkack 13y agoWe used shipping containers to kill captured Afghans via asphyxiation in 2001 http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/07/13/the-convoy-of-death-will-obama-investigate-the-afghan-massacre-of-november-2001/ http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/07/13/the-convoy-of-de... from the linked newyorktimes article: Survivors and witnesses told The New York Times and Newsweek in 2002 that over a three-day period, Taliban prisoners were stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers. The bodies were said to have been buried in a mass grave in Dasht-i-Leili, a stretch of desert just outside Shibarghan. If I were to do it again, I'd use autonomous drones with buggy firmware, or just change the Rules of Engagement so that it was a free fire zone until I decided it wasn't.
- rubiquity 13y agoFirst ClanBase dies and now the inventor of the AK-47? It's like the world is trying to steal my youth of playing Counter-Strike.
- uparix 13y agoAt least he managed not to die on his own invention.
- jotm 13y agoWhile I respect Kalashnikov and his rifle (very simple, among the best weapons in the world IMHO), the design was taken from the Germans, just like it was with the Makarov pistol. The MP43 and MP44 saw action right at the end of WW2, when the Russians stormed Berlin. Just like the Walther PP, Russians basically copied and (slightly) improved upon the design. Gotta give credit where it's due...
- tarre 13y agoI am not an expert on this area, but I have got impression, that the German WW2-era assault rifles had quite complex design and they were expensive to manufacture. I think AK47 was exactly the opposite.
- magila 13y agoWhile the two are somewhat similar in external appearance, the STG44 and AK47 are very different rifles internally. Basically the only thing they have in common mechanically is that they both use a long stroke gas piston, along with many other contemporary small arms (Garand, BAR, Bren, DP, etc).
- commandar 13y ago>Gotta give credit where it's due... From a mechanical action standpoint, the AK looks more like the American M1 Garand than it does the MP43/44. > Just like the Walther PP, Russians basically copied and (slightly) improved upon the design. You probably have a stronger case here, though, again, when it comes to the specifics, the Makarov has a parts count nearly half that of the Walther. Really, firearms design is incredibly iterative. If we're talking service handguns, for example, there are really fewer than a half-dozen designs that nearly every modern, full size service handgun made today derives from in some manner.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dsy 13y agoHowever, pride in his invention was tempered with sadness at its use by criminals This makes me wonder if when I am 94, people will look at me, a data scientist, in much the same way: "well of course AK-47 was not only used to defend Russia's border but also by criminals and militant countries to kill a ton of people" :s/AK-47/your favorite AI algorithm/ :s/defend Russia's borders/some harmless ad targeting platform/ :s/criminals and militant countries/aggressive BigCo/ :s/kill a ton of people/something really evil/ Clearly, it's a lot easier to see the evil consequences when you design a rifle. And yet, maybe I'm just being blind too. </technophobic comment. back to work on some convolutional neural network implementation, and back to job hunting at companies that promise "don't be evil", rather than "won't be evil"> Its comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture, as well as reliable and easy to maintain "ayy Edit: typos (thanks herge)
- herge 13y agoMan, I need to check up on my VIM helptext, I have no idea what 'ML algorithm' does as a regex flag. Also, vim will accept any character right after the 's' as a regex boundary, so you could rewrite it as :s:AK-47:<your favorite AI/ML algorithm: , and it would work!
- mnemonicsloth 13y agoUpton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it You aren't blind. Now what are you going to do about it?
- aaronem 13y agoTaking a lot on yourself, there, don't you think?
- michalu 13y agoOf course he created it for defence. Few years before he made the design Russia was invaded out of blue by an army with a goal to enslave whole nation. The plans of Nazis executed in Poland included systematically malnourishing nation to break the spirit and physique of young, giving no education to slavic kids except counting to 500 and learning to serve Nazis like gods. And this was actually executed. (add 16% of your population killed for no reason, gas chambers etc.) Now experience all this like Kalashnikov did, and I guess you would think differently about the role of guns then most people do now in 2013.
- refurb 13y agoFew years before he made the design Russia was invaded out of blue by an army with a goal to enslave whole nation. Don't forget that Russia was invaded by the same army they colluded with to split up and enslave the nation of Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
- michalu 13y agoThey did, and so Great Britain and France pacted with Nazis to give in Czechoslovakia in "Munich betrayal" Czechoslavakia was an ally with Fr/GB agreeing to defend each other and they were much better prepared for war. In WW2 none of the main actors were innocent.
- refurb 13y agoSimilar situations, but different in the sense that Russia took Poland from a position of power, while GB/Fr gave up Czechoslovakia from a position of weakness and didn't make any territorial gains from it.
- oddx 13y agoAnother difference is relations to annexed territories. Territories, annexed from Poland, had majority of population Eastern Slavs (Ukrainian and Belarussian), not Poles, were part of Russia for hundreds of years (except Galicia) and were annexed by Poland from Russia (Galicia from Austria) 20 years before.
- iluvuspartacus 13y agoA Kalashnikov only lasted for 94 years? Must be defective. Those babies last forever.
- negamax 13y ago2 * 47
- bluejes 13y agoWas it a Libertarian?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lanbird 13y ago94 : 2 =
- redthrowaway 13y agoI think it's telling to look at what the design goals of the AK were when it was first conceived: 1) It was to be the primary weapon of the World Wide Socialist Revolution. That means it had to operate reliably in every environment on Earth, from the Siberian tundra to the jungles of Central America to the deserts of the Middle East. It would have to work flawlessly in a -50C blizzard and a +50C sandstorm, as well as in near 100% humidity while caked in mud. 2) It was to be cheaply produced by the million in not particularly advanced Soviet factories, by people who were not highly trained, then shipped to all corners of the Earth. 3) It was to be used by guerrillas, generally poorly trained peasants, fighting to overthrow professional US-backed armies (see: Cuba). Thus the rifle had to allow untrained fighters to go toe-to-toe with professional warriors, given the constraints of the fight as it was imagined: hit-and-run, ambushes, etc. When you look at the number of design criteria it had to fulfill that had nothing to do with its merits as a marksman's weapon, it's amazing how well Kalashnikov achieved what he set out to do. The fact that it's still the primary weapon of insurgents, rebels, and terrorists 60+ years later is testament to that. As an engineering feat, it's an absolute marvel.
- rplnt 13y agoIts variants are still primary weapons of many countries' armies as well.
- gpcz 13y agoSlashdot declared the AK-47 one of the top 10 hacks of all time in 1999 (src: http://slashdot.org/story/8804 http://slashdot.org/story/8804 ) alongside Perl, Bletchley Park, the SR-71 Blackbird, Apollo 13's recovery, and Future Crew's "Second Reality." It's a little strange to see a PC demo on that list, but I would definitely put the AK-47 on there.
- quickpost 13y agoAwesome summary - thanks for sharing. Now I appreciate the beauty of his creation much more, despite the fact it was designed to kill.
- agrostis 13y agoMinor correction: in 1947, when the AK was developed, World Wide Socialist Revolution, as you put it, was not on the agenda for quite some time. The idea of Soviet autarky (“establishing socialism in one particular country”) has been adopted by Stalin as far back as in 1924, the World Revolution slogan has been removed from the USSR Constitution when it was revised in 1936, and by 1943 Stalin has done away with Comintern, the organization which was conceived (by Lenin and Trotsky, originally) with the aim of propagating revolution to capitalist countries. In 1947, USSR was indeed preparing for a possible World War III against the US and UK, but the general idea of this war, at least in the East, was that of a conflict of nations. That said, guerilla tactics and the involvement of irregular fighting forces had proved to be quite effective during WWII, and so, of course, the new weapon had to be designed with such uses in mind.
- mladenkovacevic 13y agoI think one of my countrymen wrote a perfect song to play at Mr. Kalashnikov's funeral: http://youtu.be/cHfpSx3N-nY http://youtu.be/cHfpSx3N-nY
- hedgie13 13y agoOK, you win the Internet! Mr. Kalashnikov might have liked it too.
- lomnakkus 13y agoI wonder if this is someone we might consider even worse than Thomas Midgley, Jr. [1]. (In retrospect, of course.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.
- mathattack 13y agoCompare his lack of regret with Alfred Nobel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel
- xorgar831 13y agoExactly. Also, the impact of the Manhattan Project on Richard Feynman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ah7f-1M2Sg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ah7f-1M2Sg "I simply didn't think"
- ommunist 13y agoWe had it studied at secondary school back on the USSR. AK47 was an ecosystem of assault rifle, heavy machine gun and shorty mod. You had to assemble-disassemble it in seconds to get respect at school. This weapon changed the history of humanity, and benefits far outweight losses. It is true weapon of freedom.
- rectangletangle 13y agoSimple, and easy to use UI; Robust and reliable; Extensible design; Massively scalable
- dnqthao 13y agoIt seems that the AK-47 invention is very similar to our open source software: open design (a lot of copy cat and improvement), no royalty pay, work everywhere , etc...
- inrev 13y agoRussia Today short documentary on AK-47: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQtFYkvascA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQtFYkvascA