Earliest possible logical time for the AK 47 to apear

I'm not asking the earliest time an AK could be made. I'm asking at what point would it make sense for the technology of the era to allow someone to invent an AK analog. WW1? Before? What would its effect be.
 
I think that once people were able to invent assault rifles at all someone could've come along and made the design. I'm just not when assault rifles were actually made however.
 
In what sense? Do you mean a "made in a crapsack factory in Tadhzikistan, drive over it with a tank and it still works" assault rifle? Or just an assault rifle in general? Because if the first, probably not significantly earlier - you need a lot of experience making assault rifles to make the ultimate pared-down version. If the second, probably the late thirties - but, of course, that's when people did start making assault rifles.
 
actually in reality we have a real life example of what you want, the BAR was invented in 1917, although not as legendary as the AK, it is probably one of the best automatic rifles ever made, in fact as I recall it was so good at the time the allies refused to allow its use in the front lines of WWI for fear that it would fall into the hands of the enemy. It had a comparable length service life for approximately 50 years. Although not quite the AK-47, I think one could safely say it was the 1917 equivalent to the AK.
 
The earliest fielded production rifle that comes close to meeting the specs for an assault rifle - intermediate cartridge (1200-2000 J muzzle energy), selective fire, 300-600 m effective range - would be the Russian Federov Avtomat (1914), although the Italian's had an earlier design. Give the Federov Avtomat a proper cartridge and you have a WWI era AR.
 
actually in reality we have a real life example of what you want, the BAR was invented in 1917, although not as legendary as the AK, it is probably one of the best automatic rifles ever made, in fact as I recall it was so good at the time the allies refused to allow its use in the front lines of WWI for fear that it would fall into the hands of the enemy. It had a comparable length service life for approximately 50 years. Although not quite the AK-47, I think one could safely say it was the 1917 equivalent to the AK.

Not really. The BAR was really a light machine gun used as a squad support weapon, not a rifle at all. It was WAY too heavy to be practical as an assault rifle and was NEVER intended to be used that way.
 
The earliest fielded production rifle that comes close to meeting the specs for an assault rifle - intermediate cartridge (1200-2000 J muzzle energy), selective fire, 300-600 m effective range - would be the Russian Federov Avtomat (1914), although the Italian's had an earlier design. Give the Federov Avtomat a proper cartridge and you have a WWI era AR.

That was essentially going to be my post. The Fedorov Avtomat is a cool looking gun, too. :D
 
The M1 Carbine rifle was initially scheduled to have shorter ammunition, and to be capable of fully automatic fire. Just make that version more suffesfull, and you've got the USA storming Okinawa with assault rifles.
 

Markus

Banned
Any time after WW1.
The rate of fire and magazine capacity of a bolt action rifles was too low, while the very long range was not needed in real life. Rifles were rarely fired at ranges over 400 meters, so a semi-automatic weapon with a bigger magazine and a shortened cal.30 cartridge was the obvious sollution, but stopped by a lack of money, huge numbers of WW1 rifles and ammo and military conservatism.
 
The M1 Carbine rifle was initially scheduled to have shorter ammunition, and to be capable of fully automatic fire. Just make that version more suffesfull, and you've got the USA storming Okinawa with assault rifles.

The M-1 Carbine used the whinchester 30 cal ammo .and it was designed to replaced the M-1911 not a rifle
 
AK-47 could have been invented in 1920s, but I doubt it would be adopted before "complete motorization" of army, as infantry equipped with AK-47s consume cartridges at alarming rate and needs a logistic system capable to deliver the needed ammo. However, I'm very vary of any "early AK" timeline, where assault rifle isn't introduced by ISOTed individual. IOTL AK-47 wasn't as much fruit of brain of a genius but result of co-operative effort and was at tail end of R&D going almost uninterrupted since 1st Russo-Japanese War (even Revolution and Civil War didn't manage to delay process significantly, as Fedorov linked his fate with Bolsheviks early and co-operated pretty well with them).

actually in reality we have a real life example of what you want, the BAR was invented in 1917
Yes, what pretty much killed BAR as individual weapon was overpowered cartridge. Anything chambered in .30-06/7.92x57/7.62x54/.303 is incapable of being light enough to be carried by ordinary infantryman and controllable in Full Auto mode. However, early introduction of intermediate cartridge is unlikely due to Curse of the Horse (anything adopted before Dragoons became completely obsolete have to be capable of immobilizing horse at half-mile distance with single hit or it wouldn't be adopted).

Give the Federov Avtomat a proper cartridge and you have a WWI era AR.
To tell you the truth, Avtomat was pretty lousy and temperamental construction (beign constructed around barrel recoil design). It was useful in hands of elite troops, but much too jam-prone for average soldier.

Not really. The BAR was really a light machine gun used as a squad support weapon, not a rifle at all.
Popenker says that BAR had been developed as a Rifle and was converted to LMG role only after field tests proved it being too heavy.
 
also the BAR was designed to be fired from the hip by advancing infantry, they even designed a mounting cup to be hooked to the belt(I think) to help with accuracy and recoil, it was never implemented however. When allowing for inferior technology of 30 years beforehand, and lack of experience with making or designing or using fully automatic handheld weapons then I would say that the BAR is an excellent example of an early arriving AK. It was a good reliable design, it had a very long service history, and it might even still be used by some militaries today, however I do not know if it was cheap to make though.
 
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