The term "assault rifle" was coined by none other than Adolf Hitler in what may be the only instance of the dark megalomaniac being so impressed by a defiance of his orders that he chose not to answer with retaliation. Covered not from the of the Allies but from Der Führer who had directed the project not be allowed to continue, it was first called Maschinenpistole 43 and got its baptism by fire in the bloodiest war zone history ever saw: the Russian Front. That designation was no misnomer considering the role it was slated to fill.
The term submachine gun came from the inventor of one of the most famous, Brigadier General John T. Thompson. Conceived in light of the brutal trench fighting of WWI by multiple nations simultaneously, they were at first expansions of handgun design thus Europeans would refer to them as machine pistols. While pistol calibers in the 20th century would never have anything on rifle rounds, the lighter handier firepower package was a huge short-range force multiplier for its time. By the breakout of WWII all the involved parties had standardized around an arms issue system in which the standard bolt-action battle rifles were augmented by companion submachine guns.
The key exception to this was the United States. As with other countries US submachine guns utilized its standard service pistol caliber of the time, but as much as it offered inherent accuracy and raw power the .45 ACP round was heavier, less efficient, and more difficult to handle automatic fire relative to the 9mm and .30 caliber rounds of other nations. America in WWII and beyond would still use Thompson and M3 submachine guns judiciously, but via discretionary issue rather than as unit standard weapons.
Instead the companion longarm to the M1 Garand service rifle was conceived under similar philosophy as what spawned the machine pistol: what is better than a pistol for staff and rear echelon troops plus a strong short-range alternative to the unwieldy battle rifles? The answer was a new class of weapon using an old term, the carbine. The original idea during WWI was replacing the manual bolt of the M1903 rifle with a combined magazine well and semi-automatic action chambering a unique pistol-type caliber, but that was obviously no help with weapon size and handling so got scrapped. A lighter rifle with a lighter round straddling the line between pistol and rifle became highly-favored while also pioneering a class of weapon so far ahead of its time it would not be given an overarching name until the concept was revised near the end of the Cold War.
Original Concept: The Super Submachine Gun
Mikhail Kalashnikov finished his StG 44-based design not intending it as a new general service weapon because that slot was already filled. At the close of WWII the veteran Soviet army knew it needed a short, light, and more manageable replacement for their M91 rifles and something more powerful than their 7.62x25 Tokarev pistol caliber submachine guns. The SKS was chosen to fulfill the former role, while the Kalashnikov assault rifle would be a shorter, fully-automatic submachine gun replacement.
It turned out the AK was received even more favorably than Americans and allies had considered the M1 Carbine, so much so that it was chosen as the new Soviet general service weapon although production issues kept the SKS in regular service for another decade. The AK in regular infantry better reflected the post-WWII Soviet doctrine adapting the winning approach of mobile warfare from Nazi Blitzkrieg, while the semi-automatic SKS was just as simple to use but designed during WWII with the older doctrines still in use at the time. The original Russian idea of SKS as service standard and AK as its complement would be implemented in China because that combination suited Mao's revolutionary warfare, while those in eastern Europe under the Soviet umbrella (including non-aligned Yugoslavia) followed the same trend in adopting the SKS until it could be replaced by sufficient production of AKs.
The AK and its successors most closely follow the pioneering Sturmgewehr concept in both major ways: the rifle being an enhancement of submachine gun design and the new intermediate caliber being a shortened version of the standard service rifle caliber. While heavier than a carbine so is the caliber thus weight helping to manage recoil in a weapon designed for automatic fire. The relatively stubby bullets that result from shortening a full rifle round have poor ballistic coefficient and can only hope for so much in effective range, but they still reach farther while boasting greater killing power than any pistol round.
Small Caliber High Velocity: The Super Carbine
The stipulations the M16 was created to meet used the M1 Carbine as a baseline standard. In any full-auto application there is a balancing act between effectiveness and handling, one failed so much by the NATO battle rifles of the time that regular issue versions of both the US M14 and Commonwealth FAL were often semi-auto only. Even though the American choice of the M14 over the FAL is a scandalous story all own, the fact is both rifles proved too heavy and un-manageable to succeed submachine guns while the idea that they could also replace automatic rifles was a non-starter since the new general-purpose machine guns (GPMGs) were far more suitable to the task. That left their application as general services rifles for which they were up to the task, but once it became clear in Vietnam that short-range combat vastly-favored the AK's firepower there came a reckoning.
It was General Curtis LeMay of the US Air Force who was first impressed by the M16 and sought it as the enhancement his Security Police troops needed to succeed their M1 and M2 Carbines. It impressed the Army and Marines as well but was not initially considered to replace the service standard M14. Once spurred by how unsuitable the M14 is to jungle warfare both services fielded the XM16E1 as a stopgap, but poor logistical support magnified its teething problems and left a poor taste of the M16 that persists among some to this day; these problems were solved by the M16A1 iteration which became one of the best-received service rifles ever by American troops.
For being a super variant of the carbine class (especially manifested in its shorter-barreled M4 variant in the 21st century) the M16 really found its form as a general-purpose weapon in Vietnam: its lightweight rounds make carrying more ammunition a sustainable asset, the M193 round's terminal performance can be especially-devastating within traditional carbine range (~300 yards), beyond carbine range the M16 is accurate enough to still land damaging hits and keep an enemy pinned down, and to that end there was a clamp-on bipod made that could press any standard-barreled M16 into an automatic rifle-like support role. The M16A2 configuration offers even greater precision and reach, a happy accident of adjustments to accommodate the larger M855 round.
Stacking the M16 against its AK rival only amplifies the differing schools of thought that went into each. The AK's 7.62x39 Soviet round invariably hits harder, but should the M16's 5.56x45 NATO round perform as designed it will produce at least as debilitating a wound. The M16 is for sure a higher-maintenance design, but its tight tolerances and direct impingement action are what make it supreme in accuracy and precision; proper ammo should be used to get the most out of the M16, while the AK can at least shoot basically anything even if not well.
One or the Other?
The AK type referred to in this post is strictly the original 47 in 7.62; the M16 would impress the Russians as well prompting Kalashnikov to adapt to the small-caliber high-velocity concept in form of the AK-74, which along with the M4 and other shorter-barreled M16 variants would forever consolidate the lines of super submachine gun and super carbine into lightweight intermediates that accomplish both. In terms of what is needed in modern militaries consolidation around a single platform and caliber makes perfect sense, the M16 accomplishing what the M14 was meant to but failed because the caliber was too much to be all-encompassing. Battle rifles would never go away: initially in the Second World then in the First full-caliber rifles were relegated to marksman roles where they remain most-suitable today.
Attempts to cut down 5.56x45mm and 5.45x39mm rifles into augmented submachine guns only revealed a balance upset: M16 carbines lost their round's terminal effective range and the AKS-74u has come into form only as a defensive weapon for vehicle crews while special troops prefer AKs in the old 7.62x39mm (which like 7.62x51 NATO loses little effectiveness at lower velocities). It was in another twist that Russia, perhaps inspired by the American original, had already developed its own super carbine in the SKS, and while the AK proved superior in every practical way (save raw accuracy) it could not replace the SKS until its cheaper and less precise AKM iteration made sufficient production possible. On the other hand, with America having led NATO to abandon the concept despite having been considered by the Belgians and British at the beginning, NATO would make the super submachine gun a true class of its own called the Personal Defense Weapon. This is where the terminology culminates: the super submachine gun is now the PDW and can be either an ultra-short carbine or dedicated design, the super carbine is now service standard throughout the First World and former Second, and regular pistol-caliber submachine guns are no longer standard issue but still favored by special troops for their point-blank firepower.
So which for the practical civilian application? This author favors the M16 in its original rifle-length barrel configuration, but the question is loaded. Use in rifles with tighter tolerances than an AK or SKS unlocks target round potential in 7.62x39 while chambering the AK in 5.56x45 has been done for decades (and is the service weapon of a few countries in the former Second World). It is more a caliber question instead of platform, and these two being the most popular rifle rounds in the world both have countless options for their application. For those whom it is viable supporting both is not a bad idea, but proper research for one's particular purpose(s) is recommended; a standard military specification can cover most ground and may be the best choice for a defensive mindset, but is likely to fall short on specialized applications.
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