I was speaking of the AK's tendency to heat up rather quickly, to where it is easy to bump the wrong part and burn yourself.
Trying to fire a .308 from the shoulder on full auto is no picnic, and it is hard to be accurate.
I should have mentioned the ability to carry more ammo as another reason to go to the .223, apologies.
Although I was not there, my information is coming from things I have read and a few first hand accounts from relatives and friends. I have heard many stories of squads being pinned down in the Afgan mountains by some guy maybe 400-600 yards off. Our guys were unable to do anything because the only caliber in their unit was .223, and they could not accurately return fire. This is just one example, there have been many stories of guys with Dragunov's pinning down US troops in the desert, in cities, and in the mountians, from ranges 300yds+. Our guys could do very little besides sporadic fire in the general direction of the shooter. I bet they were glad they were carrying all that ammo then. With some practice, you could accurately shoot a .223 at ranges out to around 500yds, but when you get out this far with this caliber, you are pretty much just lobbing the bullet out there, and its power is greatly diminished when it reaches the target.
Don't get me wrong for bad mouthing the .223, it is a great gun, but it should not be the standard issue.

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