AR-15 vs AK-47 – Live Fire Barrel Test
[su_heading size=”30″]The Debate goes on between these Two Famous Guns[/su_heading]
The folks from AK47 Local Union did a live-fire barrel test between a Daniel’s Defense AR-15 against the classic Vepr AK-47.
These two guns have gone head-to-head on battlefields across the world early in the “cold war” to current terrorist threats, but how will they fare in this range competition?
Well I have to admit these two famous rifles came out pretty much neck-and-neck for accuracy and robustness, even at high barrel temperatures. (very hot)
Interesting how the AK-47 round seemed to have significant drift when the winds were up downrange, but as mentioned, this has been a known factor for the AK over the years. On the other side the AR-15 dropped about an inch or two for its grouping at high temperatures, but the barrel cooled off more quickly than its rival.
Conclusion
Many in the U.S. will probably pick the AR over the AK, but the rest of the world may choose the AK. The AK-47 respectively has a solid simple design for the grunts. AR-15’s with its progressive modification capabilities makes it ideal for all situation weapon. So what do you think, which firearm would you use and why?
[su_heading size=”30″]Video Transcription[/su_heading]
[Many shots]
Clash of the titans! Two rifles: A Vepr and Daniel Defense! First let me start with the Vepr. An action episode this time, we were working on the barrel and the things connected to the barrel, but first let me start with the vepr. As you can see, the Vepr was slightly modified, I did modify the stock adapter from our friends from Difinitive Arms, to fit the M4 stock, and the reason behind it is, because later down the line, we[‘re] going to do much more with those rifles and optics, and I want to give them equal chance, equal opportunity, for the vepr, and it shouldn’t be discriminated because of the stupid polymer stock, which is standard on the rifle, but is not very good for the optics, as we all know. Besides, we have like five-hundred dollars difference between the Vepr and the DanielDefense, so we can spend some money on the Vepr and upgrade the Vepr.
But, enough with the bullshit talk. What we did today, this is a very cool test, guys, and I think so that a lot of you guys were saying that this test would actually favor the Vepr because of the heavy barrel, so one thing we’re doing, we’re shooting a group of five shots from the twenty-five yards, and then we’re doing the magazine dump, and not magazine, but four magazines. Four magazines dump, I checked the temperatures, I think so the hottest point was on the gas block for the Vepr, and it was close to four-hundred degrees fahrenheit. But this was the first group, as you can see the grouping is impressive. What I’m looking for is the center of the group, and then the shift, point of impact shift, after warming up the rifle. And as I said, this case we only got only fifty-five degrees of fahrenheit outside temperature, but the barrel warmed up after four magazines to like four-hundred degrees. And this was the first group before the warm up, and this is the second group. after the warmup. So as you can see, there is almost no point of impact shift. So Vepr did very very nice in this test, and as expected. This is the benefit of having the hot heavy barrel, and the heavy barrel benefits the Vepr in this punch-out shootout.
Still, I was kinda surprised, I mean I know that we are reaching the four-hundred and four-hundred-fifty -depends on the ambient temperature-, but that rifle warm[ed] up, warm[ed] up after the magazines. We had one malfunction, but it was obviously not the Vepr’s fault, the primer [fell] out from the Wolf ammo, so this is not the rifle’s fault, okay? Whatever happened there. But it happened, and it’s documented, and you can see the picture [indistinguishable]. But the Wolf ammo is… eh, it’s Wolf ammo, I will leave it at that.
Then, then we switch to Daniel Defense, M4 V-11 Lightweight, and a lot of you were saying that this is where this rifle is going to get punished. As you can see, I put on it the iron sights, I didn’t want to use optics on any of those rifles for now, for this test, because I don’t want to be blaming optics on the heat or whatever. So we stick to the iron sights. And these are Troy iron sights, so if you want to calculate the cost, yes it’s almost a hundred-fifty dollars more now, on the Daniel Defense, so this thing– I just keep throwing the money at it. All joking aside, let’s look at the target from DanielDefense, guys. This was the target from DanielDefense, and as you can see, this was the first group, and then after the four magazines dump, we had the shift by– I would say about one inch down. So this is the twenty-five yards, and you gotta multiply this, now, by four if you want to be for the one-hundred, so you will probably have about four inches, more or less, four inches shift at the one-hundred yards when you will do the four magazine dumps in a row.
What was really interesting, this rifle didn’t warm up as much as AK. We were way below four-hundred, we were in the upper three-hundreds, that was the barrel part right here, and that was kind of interesting to see. Actually though, we didn’t warm up as much as we did on the Vepr. Now, interesting thing, guys, we took both rifles to see so-called ‘combat accuracy’, ok, Iron Sights at three-hundred yards distance, on ten shots with the AR with those Iron Sights, ten hits, really nothing exciting to report, the rifle shot very very well, and all hits landed on target.
One thing I forgot to say, we had two malfunctions when doing the barrel test– the original barrel test. Again, it was a problem with the ammo, it was the light primer sights. But then absolutely nothing. So maybe because the rifles were still new, maybe they both had some issues, I don’t know, forget about it.
But going back to shooting at three-hundred yards, ten for ten, no issues with wind. We have wind today, and no issues from Daniel Defense, it performed as it should, so that was nice to see. Now, let me talk about the Vepr, and the three-hundred yards. So, I made the ten shots, almost immediately I switched to the Vepr and started placing shots on target, and all shots landed on the right side, and when I went to check on the target, I had three misses, and let me tell you this guys, I’m no stranger of shooting the AK at three-hundred yards, so for me this was disappointing. You have only seven hits. The thing is, as you can see, the hits were placing constantly on the right side, and the misses went to the right side, and the reason for this is, from what I was shooting there wasn’t that much of the wind, but on the targets, I had the wind from left to right, I had no optic, and I couldn’t see that there is some movement, I assume that I have the wind, I didn’t make correction. When I shot with the correction, you can see I was able to place the targets in the middle of the target and do the nice grouping. But first group counts, and what happened, you know, ten shots, seven hits, three misses. So, it is what it is. This just shows you how that 7.62 by 39 round is, guys, is prone to wind. And you have to, I keep preaching this, when you’re shooting that caliber, you have to watch out, especially when you are shooting at that extended range. [The] farther you go, more punished by wind you will be. And this was basically the case.
But that’s it for this episode, as you can see, you can see what Daniel Defense can do as far as the barrel when it’s heated up, and what the Vep– and what impact of heat that does or does not have on the Vepr. Both rifles are going strong so far, we have managed to log almost 500 rounds per each, I think it was something like 470 and 485, a little bit more on the Vepr. I will call this almost 500 rounds. And with the initial hiccups at the beginning, nothing else happened, both rifles are going strong. So that’s it for this episode, we’ll be back for more, stay tuned to the Clash of the Titans series. Thanks for watching!
Original idea from Andy Van Loan revised by AmsjStaff
Source: AK Operators Union, Local 47-74