"Kalashnikov Infantry Machine Gun" successfully passed combat tests
The successors of machine guns, as you know, were single machine guns, from which you can fire from a bipod, a ground machine, as well as anti-aircraft, armored personnel carrier, helicopter installations.
One of the best modern single machine guns is considered to be the 7,62-mm Kalashnikov PC machine gun with a rapidly replaceable barrel and its upgraded version of the PKM, which entered service in the 1969 year. He has repeatedly proven effectiveness in battle. In 80-ies, combat experience revealed the insufficiency of both firepower and sighting range of regular RPK-74 machine guns used in the squad-platoon, and caused the use of PKM machine guns in the manual version (with firing from the bipod) instead. Thanks to a sufficiently powerful patron, the PKM provided the required range of fire and punching the action of bullets at various obstacles, but the troops expressed their wishes to increase its ability to conduct intense fire without the need to replace the barrel or pauses to cool it.
In the same 80-ies, the key focus is increasing the probability of hitting the target from the first shot (turn). It touched and machine gun weapons. In particular, it was necessary to increase the efficiency of firing PKM when firing from a bipod, without changing the type of cartridge used (and this, we note, is the same rifle cartridge of the 1908 sample of the year, although repeatedly upgraded). This would increase the effectiveness of the machine gun from the machine. Specialists from the TsNIITOCHMASH (Klimovsk city) and the Kovrovsky Mechanical Plant dealt with the problem.
It was necessary to eliminate or partially compensate for factors that reduce the accuracy of shooting. And this is the barrel oscillations, and the deterioration of the ballistic characteristics due to its heating, and the thermal mirage created by the air heated from the barrel in the field of view of the sight (especially sensitive when using optical sights). A group of employees of TsNIITOCHMASH (A. Deryagin, N. Denisov, V. Suslov, M. Chugunov, A. Neogodov and others) carried out experimental and design work to improve the accuracy of the PKM machine gun, during which it implemented a set of measures to improve accuracy and efficiency. barrel vitality. So there was a machine gun, which became known under the code Pecheneg. The production technology of the Pecheneg machine gun was worked out at the Kovrovsky Mechanical Plant. The armament of the machine gun entered under the name "Kalashnikov infantry machine gun" (PKP, GRAU index - 6P41).
The main changes have undergone the trunk node. Changing the design of the barrel and the introduction of casings increased its rigidity, improved cooling, protected it from weathering, and reduced its own oscillations. The gap between the casing and the outer surface of the barrel, the barrel finning and the ejector at the muzzle of the barrel (working on the principle of siphon due to the vacuum created by the muzzle during the expiration of powder gases from the barrel bore) provide for uniform uniform cooling of a part of the barrel length with external air.
The rigid handle of the barrel assembly additionally increases its rigidity and reduces thermal leashes during intensive shooting. The barrel cover and handle protect the aiming line from the thermal “mirage”. Transferring the folding bipod to the muzzle cut has increased the stability of the machine gun when firing. The accuracy of PKP firing from the machine and from the bipod in 1,7-1,9 is twice as good as PKM. The increase in survivability made it possible to abandon the interchangeable barrel (this compensates for the increase in the mass of the machine gun, since the calculation may not carry an interchangeable barrel), although the mount of the barrel at the control panel remained quick-release.
The control panel design (6P41) uses up to 80 percent of the parts and parts of the PKM machine gun. This made it possible to expand its production at the Kovrovsky Mechanical Plant in 1999 in the year (later it was transferred to the V. A. Degtyarev Plant in the same Kovrov). The machine gun successfully passed combat tests in Chechnya; in 2008, it was used by Russian troops against Georgian aggression against South Ossetia.
Automatics, the locking assembly, the trigger mechanism, and the feed mechanism of the control panel cartridges are similar to basic PCM. That is, the automation has a gas engine with a discharge of powder gases through the hole in the wall of the barrel and the long stroke of the gas piston. Locking the barrel is made by turning the bolt, in which two lugs go beyond the combat stops of the receiver. The shock mechanism operates from the recoil-fighting spring placed in the channel of the bolt carrier. The shot is made from the rear sear, and the trigger mechanism allows only automatic fire to be fired. Safety lever lock blocks the trigger lever. The reloading handle, located on the right, remains fixed when fired.
The PC has a tape feed with a tape feed from right to left. The tape is metal, link, not loose, with the closed link. Tapes are assembled from pieces of 50 links using a cartridge. The nominal capacity of the tapes is 100 cartridges (in manual version) or 200 (in easel). Feed the cartridge from the tape into the chamber of the push-pull with the extraction of the cartridge from the link of the tape and its reduction during the course of the moving system back and sending to the chamber during reeling. The belt feed mechanism of the lever circuit is driven by the feed lever (feeder) mounted on the right wall of the receiver and its protrusion and roller covering the slide frame. The windows for supplying and exiting the tape are equipped with folding dust covers, the window for ejecting spent cartridges is equipped with a spring-loaded dust cover that automatically opens when the shutter moves back.
TACTICAL AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS of the control panel ("LIVER")
7,62 caliber mm
Cartridge 7,62x54R (7,62-mm rev.1908 g.)
Machine weight 8,7 kg
Length weapons 1155 mm
Barrel length 640 mm
Initial bullet speed 825 m / s
Rate of fire 650 rds / min
Fighting rate of fire 250 rds / min
Sighting range 1500 m
Capacity of cartridges 100, 200
Sight sector. The presence of a special bar on the left wall of the receiver allows you to put on a machine gun night or telescopic sight.
"Pecheneg" can be used for firing from a tripod machine. At the same time, the machine gun can be mounted on the 6Т5 machine designed by L. Stepanova, which was adopted at the time along with the PKM machine gun and is distinguished by exceptional ease: the weight of the machine is just 4,5 kg. The possibility of mounting the box with the tape on the right rear leg of the machine allows you to change position without unloading the machine gun.
However, the control panel ("Pecheneg") is usually still in the manual version with the fastening of a regular cartridge box with a ribbon on 100 cartridges for the machine gun itself.