Two Gun Industry Greats
Many of the dominant military shoulder arms in use today, all over the world, are based on a couple of basic designs: The AR-15/M16/M4 platform, originally the brainchild of an American, Eugene Stoner, and the AK-series rifles, originally designed by the Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov. While these arms supply much of the world, and while they have both seen enormous commercial success, they are nevertheless quite different in their design philosophies – and the men who created them are quite different as well.
Let’s look at just how different – and how alike – they were.
Eugene Stoner
Born Eugene Morrison Stoner in 1922, the designer of the AR-15 pattern rifles attended California’s Long Beach Polytechnical High School, then went to work as a machinist for Vega Aircraft Company, which later was to become Lockheed. He served in the Marines in the South Pacific and China during WW2, in Aviation Ordnance. During his Marine service, the young Stoner first worked with weapons as an armorer, which would serve him well in later years.
It was in 1954 when Eugene Stoner came to work for ArmaLite, the company from which the AR-15 platform derives its name – “ArmaLite Rifle.” While he produced a number of prototypes, none of them besides the AR-5 survival rifle saw any success.
Then, in 1956, he designed what became known as the Stoner bolt and carrier system, which was initially used in the 7.62 NATO-chambered AR-10, variants of which are still for sale today. This direct-impingement system eschewed the use of a gas piston and operating rod, until then more usual in semi-automatic and automatic rifles.
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The AR-10 was submitted to the Army for evaluation in 1956, although was rejected in favor of the M-14. But the Army wasn’t done with ArmaLite yet; they requested a modification, and it was Eugene Stoner’s assistant, Robert Fremont, who scaled down the AR-10 and adapted it to the 5.56mm NATO cartridge, known in civilian livery as the .223 Remington. ArmaLite sold the rights to the design to Colt Firearms Company, which produced the first M16 rifles for the U.S. armed forces.
Eugene Stoner wasn’t done yet. He worked as a consultant for Colt for some years and designed a few other martial arms that, sadly, didn’t blow up many skirts. But the big one he got right.
As for his counterpart:
Mikhail Kalashnikov
The inventor of the Avtomat Kalashnikov (AK) pattern rifles was born in Russia in 1919. Like most Russian men of his generation, he served in the Great Patriotic War (WW2) in the Red Army, during and after the war, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant general.
Kalashnikov’s first design, in 1944, was built around the then-new 7.62x39mm Russian, a medium-power round loosely based on the 7.62x33mm Kurz round used in the German StG 44 assault rifle. His first rifle design was based on the American M1 and was passed over in favor of another design that would become the SKS carbine. But Kalashnikov kept working, and in 1947 brought out the first of the immortal AK series, the AK-47, or Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947. The Red Army adopted the AK-47 as its primary service weapon in 1949 – and the rest is, as they say, history. As of this writing, over 100 million AK-pattern rifles have been manufactured.
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The Guns and Design Philosophies
But as to the guns themselves? They ended up being quite different, each reflective of the societies in which their designers lived.
Oh, both pieces were broadly similar; in military trim, they were both select-fire carbines, both firing medium-power cartridges, both with detachable box magazines with a standard capacity of 20 (the early M16s) or 30 rounds. Neither was a main battle rifle, like the American M1/M14; these were true “assault rifles.”
But the similarities stop there.
The American arm, designed by Eugene Stoner, was (for the time) high-tech. While the earlier marks of the M16 suffered from reliability issues, most of those were worked out in the M16A1 and A2 as well as the M4 carbine. In my service, I was assigned both the A1 and A2 in different units and had no problem keeping them functional, providing one paid attention to cleaning. The AR-15 platform, of which the M-16/M4 is a subset, is designed to deliver accurate fire, and it does that; it’s an easy weapon to shoot well, but the troops have to be rigorously schooled on cleaning and maintenance.
The AK – that was a different piece. Designed to remain reliable with little or no cleaning or maintenance and (at least, the ones in both civilian and military trim that I have been able to handle and shoot) not very accurate. This is a lead-chucker, pure and simple, intended to put out a lot of bullets, achieving accuracy by volume. The difference in design can be summarized by noting that, in the M16/M4 weapons, the safety selector proceeds from “SAFE” to “SEMI” and then either “FULL” or “BURST,” while the early AK’s safety goes from “SAFE” to “FULL” and then “SEMI.” The AK, I once heard said, was designed for poorly trained peasant soldiers and irregulars. That’s as may be – but you can’t argue with success, and in just those kinds of poorly trained peasant armies and irregular forces, the AK-series weapons are ubiquitous.
There is a neat conclusion to the stories of Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov. In 1990, the two actually came face-to-face.
On May 16, 1990, Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 and its derivatives, met for the first time. They spent the next few days talking, sharing stories, shopping, going out to dinner, and touring Washington, D.C. They visited the Smithsonian Institution, the NRA's National Firearms Museum, and a hunting lodge owned by the gun club at Star Tannery, where they went shooting. They also visited the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where they watched new weapons being tested. During this short visit, both men, intimately familiar with the other's work, shared a common bond and became friends, "not needing an interpreter to get their thoughts across."
Now, that would have been an interesting conversation to have sat in on.
As It Stands Today
Both guns are still in wide use. Both, in civilian semi-auto form, are popular with American shooters; the AR-15 may well have taken the role of “America’s Rifle” from the Winchester 1894. Both, in military trim, are still in use in militaries all over the globe. They are both great examples of how much a theme can vary. Both, as true assault rifles while in military trim, can trace their design philosophies back to the WW2 German Sturmgewehr 44, the first of that kind.
You can’t argue with success. Both rifles have their critics – but both have been produced in the millions. That’s why both Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov have earned their laurels as some of the most consequential gun designers in history.
