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The SKS or the AR in a shtf scenario

27K views 157 replies 46 participants last post by  Laufer 
I'd go with the SKS. General Simonov designed his rifle for the Eastern Front battle conditions the Red Army endured in World War II. It's klunky, sure. I don't find it at all clumsy, and my dad hammered "Count your rounds when you are shooting!" into me from the time he let me have my first BB gun to the point it is second nature. (I don't know whether he had that hammered into him by Grandpa with the Winchester Model 94 that was the family rifle, or his drill sergeant when he joined the Army, but he took it to heart.)

Simonov knew that even though soldiers should field-strip and clean their rifles at every opportunity, sometimes you don't have the opportunity; thus, he designed the SKS to work even when filthy. That counts for a lot with me, especially in the scenario we are discussing. I keep hearing the duckspeak that the Poodle Shooter really has been improved since the Vietnam days when it earned its epithet of "the Jam-A-Matic," but my personal experience with the design on the range (other people's rifles; I won't own one) and the stories told by soldiers and Marines who are veterans of every conflict from Vietnam to Afghanistan of the M-16s and M-4s jamming when they needed them the most tell me to stay away from the AR family. I simply don't trust them.

I own two Yugo Model 59/66s, one stock and the other set up as a plinker with a scope and a bipod. I've never had either one jam. I would very much like to get a couple more when finances improve.

The bottom line is if my choices are limited to those two, I'll go with the SKS. I trust my SKS rifles to work when I need them to, and I don't trust anything built to Eugene Stoner's original direct impingement design.
 
Perhaps the parameters of this thread need to be defined. I am not looking at the AR as one of the exotic caliber uppers made of unobtainium and chambered in .44 Callahan. I presumed, apparently incorrectly, the AR as being in 5.56 Poodle Shooter and the SKS as being in 7.62 x 39 ComBloc. As close to stock as possible, in other words.
 
Note to all:

The next time we put something like this up for discussion around the potbellied stove with the coffeepot on it, we need to define the parameters of the discussion a lot more precisely. I presumed that we were talking about the stock, government issue versions of the two rifles, at least insofar as the AR-15 is ever "stock." I was envisioning a semi-auto-only version of the US GI Poodle Shooter, with the adjustable stock and perhaps a picatinney rail for optics for the AR; and a Yugoslav Model 59/66 for the SKS.
 
Any SKS would do, wherever made. I'd like to get Russian and ChiCom models, but the prices hereabouts are prohibitive. The only affordable ones are the Yugos.

I won't cut any slack on the Poodle Shooter. ONE upper, in the issue 5.56 NATO/.223 Rem. No swap-out uppers you can cannibalize. Compare the rifles on that basis.
 
There is an old Roman saying...sort of...
A good sailor can manage thru the storm, even when his sails are torn.
I could make do with SKS, AK, AR
I could make do with an SKS or an AK provided I had the manual for it, but not the AR. When I took the ASVAB at the Academy while pursuing a USMC commission I was not asked to take due to the Navy and USMC's downsizing after Vietnam, I did so badly on the mechanical aptitude portion of the exam that the colonel administering it to me said, "Mister, if you get a commission your company commander is going to have to assign you a batman to take care of things like cleaning your rife -- and maybe tying your boots!" The AR has too many little parts to lose for my liking.
 
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"In my perfect domestic conditions, with access to parts and tools that I will not have to salvage, fight someone else over, or carry with me - and which will add to my overall pack weight if I do carry them,"

arent you kinda dismissing the fact that the SKS is heavier than the AR in the first place? ar+ some spare pats = SKS with no spare parts.

the average sks is 8.5lbs while the average ar is 7.5lbs or so, that leaves approx an entire pound for spares/ tools at an equivalent weight.

or, more ammo, 7.62x39 is already heavier than 5.56, so either your carrying less rounds, or more weight. the AR's ammo advantage is even greater if you consider that you can carry the rifle+ some ammo and still be the same weight as an SKS with NO AMMO.
I prefer the SKS because for me it is comfortable, a good fit, and easy to maintain. The reliability is such that you don't need a lot of spares. Simonov designed them for maximum reliability with minimum maintenance. (I think if General Simonov and John Garand had had the opportunity to sit down and talk the way General Kalashnikov and Eugene Stone once did, they would have found a lot to talk about.)

As far as the ammo issue goes, Dad had a saying: "A million rounds that don't hit the target aren't worth as much as one that does." Veterans of the Afghan War I have met have complained, angrily, about hitting a hadji at long range (400 yards or more) with a Poodle Shooter and seeing him got down; then next day having the sonofabitch show up at the local coffee shop showing off the band-aid covering his wound and laughing his fool head off. Now, I don't know if my scoped SKS could make a head shot at 400 yards --don't have access to a range that long - but I am mortally certain I could hit a bad guy in the body at that range with it. And unless he was wearing body armor, he surely would not appear at the coffee shop showing off his wound the next day. It's possible he might be the guest of honor at a funeral, especially if I was using softpoint hunting ammo and not FMJ. Yes, you can carry more 5.56 NATO than 7.62 ComBloc. But quantity is not everything. Effectiveness counts for more, at least with me.

Reliability? I have never managed to get an AR to run a full magazine without jamming at least once, no matter how carefully I inserted the magazine. I have never experienced a failure to feed, failure to extract, or a stovepipe with my SKS. I suspect it has something to do with fewer moving parts.

Cleaning? Dead simple with the SKS. A major PITA with the AR. Others in the thread have acidly commented on the finicky nature of the Poodle Shooter. I started mine on Hoppe's No. 9 and gun oil. It ran fine. But it seems to like Gunzilla better. If necessary, I could probably clean it with gasoline and lube it with used motor oil and it would still run.

You folks who like the Jam-A-Matics are welcome to them. However, for the scenario under discussion I will stick with my faithful SKS, because I can trust it.
 
Seriously, I get the AK is better than the AR argument, but the SKS is an outdated relic. I love my Mosin Nagant, but also realize its an antiquated design.

You tell me, if the SKS is so great, why did Russia transition to the AK?
Because General Simonov's carbine/rifle (I've heard it referred to both ways) came along just a little too late; and because the AK-47 designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov better suited the Soviet Red Army's infantry philosophy.

The Russians/Soviets have never had a high regard for the lives of the peasants who have made up their armies. But until recently, they had enough manpower that they could employ the "Russian Steamroller" as their primary infantry tactic. Send a big wave of armed men to charge an enemy position. Yes, you will lose a lot of them, but enough will get through to crush the enemy. The AK ties into that. By Western standards, it's not terribly accurate; a cowboy from the Old West shooting .44-40 out of a Model 1873 Winchester could do better. But it sends a lot of lead downrange very fast, keeps the enemy's heads down, discourages accurate return fire by anyone except the machine gunners. and allows that human wave to get close enough to break over and wipe out the enemy position being attacked.

General Simonov realized that the Mosin Nagant was terminally obsolete even when compared to the Mauser 98K. Yes, it had the virtues of always firing when you pulled the trigger, even in lousy battlefield conditions, even when it hadn't been cleaned in awhile. Yes, if you had the time to tune it up (which consists mainly of free-floating the barrel and doing a little polishing on the bolt body, the boltway, the trigger sear and the sear spring, and required nothing more than 400 grit sandpaper and brass polish if you could get it), the Mighty Mosin will perform as well as a Springfield, even better sometimes. But it was still a long-barreled, bolt action rifle in what the United States had turned into a semi-auto world.

The Russian attempt to field a semi-auto rifle to replace the Mosin (the SVT-40) was not a success. The SVT was harder for Ivan Muzhik to maintain, was flimsier than the Mosin, had the distressing habit of cracking at the wrist due to recoil, and unless properly installed in a properly milled wood stock (it might have done better in a stock made of chestnut, maple, or walnut than the softer birch stock that was used), the action would shift in the stock, sending your zero straight to hell. Also, it required more machining, took longer to produce, and cost much more to make than the 91/30. The result was the SVT being pulled from issue and the 91/30 continuing as the Red Army's main battle rifle for World War II.

The SKS used the same bullet as the Mosin, but a shorter case, an intermediate power round. The 10 round magazine loaded from stripper clips, a concept Private Ivan Muzhik already understood. It was reasonably easy to strip down and maintain. And like the M44, it had an integral bayonet, one less thing for Private Muzhik to misplace. And above all, its rate of fire was significantly faster than the Mosin, which again played into the Russian Steamroller technique.

If the General had started work on the SKS in 1940 and it had had been rushed into series production in, say, 1943, the military academics would in my opinion still be arguing about which was the best battle rifle of the Second World War, the Garand or the SKS. In the event, it did not go into service until 1949, by which time it had already been supplanted by the AK-47. It came along just a little too late to become the legends that both the Mosin and the AK have become.

To answer your question about why the Soviets went to the AK from the Mosin with barely a pause for the SKS, it comes down to capabilities and manufacturing costs. Put an SKS and an AK-47 side by side and look at them. The AK has a lot of stamped parts, where the SKS has machined parts. The AK has a larger magazine capacity. The AK uses detachable magazines, while the SKS has an internal magazine. (One thing I have never understood is why General Simonov did not incorporate a 10 or 15 round detachable magazine into his design. The only reason I can come up with is he believed such a magazine would force Private Muzhik to have to expose himself too much when firing from the prone position, thus offering the enemy a larger target.) The SKS is semi-auto-only; the AK is select-fire. And when it came to the bottom line, the SKS cost more to manufacture than did the AK.

Put it all together, and the AK-47 was a better bargain for the Soviet military. Therefore, the SKS was replaced as the infantry rifle of the Red Army, with the SKS being relegated to duty with second-line and noncombat units like the engineers, the signal corps, and rear area/domestic posts like the Soviet Air Defense Forces who guarded the flak guns and surface-to-air missile sites.

The SKS is a tough, reliable carbine that will take the kind of abuse without blinking that would send any AR I have ever run across running home to Mama crying its eyes out. That's why I like it, and wish I could find a few more from other countries like Russia, China, Albania, and especially East Germany. (Collector mania, and those are not all of the countries that made them, either!) But for me, the bottom line is I trust the SKS to work when I need it to, while I do not trust the AR platform at all. I won't own a firearm I cannot trust. I suspect many of the SKS partisans on G&G feel the same way.
 
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