Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of the AK-47, Dead at 94

This is a vintage model of what is certainly one of the most important weapons in history ...

Originally called the Avtomat Kalashnikov 1947, the name was quickly shortened to AK-47 and the rest is history.

This is Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the weapon, holding a new one ...

Mr. Kalashnikov died December 23rd in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia republic of Russia, after a long illness.  Born on December 10, 1919, he is probably survived by a bunch of grandchildren and certainly by about a gazillion of the original assault rifles and subsequent models that bear his name -- most notably being the AKM, which was designed in the 1950s as an upgrade to the AK-47 but which is still commonly referred to by the original name.

What made the AK-47 the most widely used weapon in history was its low cost to manufacture, its simplicity of use and maintenance, and its extraordinary durability under terrible conditions.  Manufactured with more generous tolerances than typical modern-era weapons, the AK-47 could function in conditions that rendered, for example, early versions of the American Vietnam-era AR-15 almost useless.  The slight loss of accuracy due to the looser construction was a generally accepted trade-off.

Kalashnikov, in his later years, had mixed feelings about the wide-spread use of his rifle, particularly by terrorists.  He once observed, "I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work -- for example a lawnmower."

Later in his life he actually did invent one.  A lawnmower, that is.

If your security clearance is well-tuned, you can see Osama bin Laden's AK-47 at the CIA museum in Langley, Virginia.  The New York Daily News has a good story here.

A final quote from Kalashnikov: "My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland.  It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov was used in so many troubled places.  I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers."

RESOURCES

The BBC obituary is here.

Hundreds of books have been written about this famous weapon and its role in military and political history.  The top of the Amazon list is here.

This from The History Channel, if you have 45 or so minutes ...