Originally Posted by
Pat_Rogers
I strongly doubt that the former Soviet Union had the same amount of fashion "correctness" that exists on the errornet forums....
I worked in a unit called Foreign Material Acquisition and Exploitation during a turbulent period of the Cold War.
Our interviews and sources stated that the original light brown /orange color on the AK74 series was to
1. Visually distinguish it from the 7.62x39 AK47/ AKM magazine
2. Blend with natural surroundings
When the Bakelite 7.62x39 mags first came out, that sorta' shot down #1, but made sense as far as #2.
Later information was that the light brown/ orange had too much red in it to be useful as camouflage.
Plum is a more shaded color, and while there are some shades of plum in nature, it is clearly not as dominant as browns and greens.
Certainly black is the most useless color for camouflage, and is better known as a target indicator.
There is a theory that they went to black to save money, but that is anecdotal only.
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