The AK first went into action to put down East Berlin riots in 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Egyptian soldiers used it to assassinate President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Troops on both sides in the Iran-Iraq war carried it. The al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden used a modernized one as a prop in his recruiting videos.
From its earliest days, the Kalashnikov has been judged a superior weapon because of its simplicity and reliability. In a compact, 10-pound package, a single fighter holds the fully automatic firepower of a machine gun. It has only eight moving parts, can be broken down and reassembled in 30 seconds and will fire when very dirty.
During the war in Vietnam, the rifle was used by the North Vietnamese army, Viet Cong insurgents and, sometimes, U.S. forces. Marines would often put down their standard-issue M-16s and pick up AK-47s from fallen North Vietnamese soldiers because they found the AK to be more reliable.