Kalashnikov Dead

[PanzerJaeger]

It depends how you look at it. There were more precise rifles out there, with better range and a rate of fire but Kalash did what it supposed to do. Simplistic design, easy to maintain, easy to use, cheap, reliable, functions properly even in extreme weather conditions...

I'm not an expert on rifles by any means, vz.58 could be a better rifle than ak 74, Czechs had/have a quite good armaments industry...

I'm not suggesting that Russia should have adopted a more advanced Western style rifle. That would not have satisfied their doctrinal requirements. What I'm saying is that the vz.58 was a better AK than the AK. It is lighter (both the gun and the mags), shorter, more reliable, more accurate, more versatile, better balanced and ergonomically superior with less recoil and last round bolt hold open. And while it does have a milled receiver, production time and cost was only slightly more.

Then explain how the MG-42 and the Walther P-38 were both put back into production as the MG-3 and Walther P-1 in the late 50's?

After the war, the US forced NATO aligned countries to adopt .308 battle rifles instead of assault rifles. It can be reasonably assumed that had the Germans gone with an assault rifle of their own design after the war, it would have been based on the STG44.

What I find interesting about the AK rifles are the more recent 100-series, AK-107 and so on, they also look very similar to their older models, come in black and seem to have mostly interior/minor improvements.

The balanced recoil system on the 100-series rifles is actually a pretty significant improvement over the earlier versions. Felt recoil is largely eliminated.