The AK is not as reliable as the lore says. The AR is not as unreliable as the Vietnam lore tells you. The AR is a perfectly reliable military rifle, otherwise it would not be adopted all the time (whereas the AK is slowly drifting away aside from Russia).The AK is more reliable
It is pretty unergonomic, yes. Then again, you only need to rack it once, and the reciprocating charging handle of an AK is far from ideal as well. Especially considering most users are right-handed. The AR configuration keeps the gun more protected from outside elements, as there is no big slot on the side where the handle has to movedoesn't have the world's worst charging handle
It does. It's called the charging handle. Used to bat a cartridge into battery a few times during my service ("oh but how can you do that, the AK is so reliable!") I don't really know how useful or useless the FA is on an AR, but the fact that 95% (or even more) guns are being made with the FA in it (especially military ones) tells me that even if it's not that useful, doesn't hurt to have it there.doesn't have a stupid useless forward assist button thats more likely to do harm than good
Seems like a non-issue to medoesn't have a spring in a tube in the stock that you can hear when you fire
7.62x39 is good for one thing: shooting suppressed. 5.56 is easier to shoot (flatter, faster, softer recoil), lighter, cheaper to make, more universal around the world today, kills humans just as well etc.the performance difference between 7.62 and 5.56 is not quite as you described
There is a good reason that the AK basically not being adopted or made new anywhere around the world (apart from countries like Vietnam and some other third world countries) besides Russia, while the AR is constantly getting adopted in different configurations. The 7.62x39 is going away, even the Russians got rid of it as their main service cartridge 50 years ago.
This might sound like a hate post on AK, not the case. They are fun guns, and I had good memories from my service with one. Pretty reliable, and accurate (well, talking about a Finnish RK-62 with Lapua ammo here). But they are not on par with the AR or other modern assault rifles of this current day. Ergonomics are pre-WW2, and manufacturing is WW2 tech.