The real AKs in the field are rubbish, badly maintained and unreliable, the sights are trash. Our snipers with the M24 system kick their asses at anything over 200m. The Taliban just spray rounds and hope to hit something. Our tactic is to pin them down until arty or air can smash them. The biggest danger at longer ranges are the tribal fighters with their old British Enfields, most of them are on the government coalition side now, except for a few Pashtun tribes in the southeast.
@kevbo I think the guy the reporter interviewed is a theorist with little or no field experience. The only real problem is at the squad level; the Army substituted the 5.56mm M249 SAW for the M60 7.62mm machine gun some years ago, leaving no high-volume weapon with adequate stopping power beyond 300m. The vast majority of infantry are not trained to shoot the assault rifle beyond 250m, so re-equipping them would mean major retraining.