26 Apr 02

Rifle endurance tests from friends in South Africa:

"We did high-volume testing of 223 and 7.62X39 rifles here last week. We fired one thousand rounds through each as fast as we could insert magazines. We used various brands of ammunition, including Norinco, Russian surplus, and local reloads. Here are the results:

Norinco 56S (Chinese Kalashnikov with a folding stock). Fired one thousand rounds with no stoppages. Forend was warm, but could still be grasped comfortably.

H&K93 (223) went down at seven hundred rounds. No parts breakage. It just stopped working.

Ruger Mini-14 went down at five hundred rounds with a broken recoil spring.

Colt AR-15. Fired one thousand rounds with no stoppages. However, the forend became too hot to grasp.

I wish we had other rifles to test, but these are the ones that are common over here."

Lesson: During the development of the space program, NASA and its Russian counterpart both decided that astronauts would need a writing instrument that would work in zero gravity. As one would expect, NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in space. The Russians just used pencils!

The forgoing describes the difference between Russian and Western technologies. Western designs are typically complicated, slick, technologically advanced, but temperamental. Russian designs are typically rude, crude, aesthetically offensive, but monotonously reliable.

/John