The inaccuracy of the AK’s has become an urban legend ginned up by the hard core AR lovers who probably are charter members of the BUY American Club. They were not intended to be match grade weapons although with proper tuning and hand loaded ammo they can be. But then that would cost a cartload of money to transform something into something it’s not. It has been done, by people who have more money than sense. If the weapon is well built it should be able to hit a man sized target at 300 meters.If you do your part. Granted that’s a fairly large target but at 300 meters away, you can barely see a 6 foot tall man standing or at least I can’t. But most firefights happen no where near that far away.
The US GI’s are trained to use their battle sights on the M-16. It’s the only way any rifle will work. The Jihadists often shoot from the hip and and basically use the AK as a bullet hose and don’t hit much. That’s why there are big body counts when our troops mix it up with these people. They know how to use their sights properly and they work. Our troops have electronic sights that give them yet more advantage. It’s not the weapons, it’s who’s behind them.
The Russians stopped using the M-43 round (7.62×39) in 1974 and took NATO’s lead and developed the 5.45×39 round for their AK-74 which is more on par with the M-16 in accuracy. Better range, accuracy, and more devastating wounding characteristics but it lacks the punch that the bigger old rounds had. So we have a choice of AK clones, the AK-74 for when you really need to reach out and touch someone, and the ‘47 for when you need to knock the hell out of something. They are accurate enough
pics may be unsuitable to the squeamish>> http://www.jaaos.org/content/14/10/S52/F2.expansion.