PKM

The Soviet Union's workhorse 7.62mm general-purpose machine gun — a belt-fed, open-bolt design that has armed infantry squads, vehicle mounts, and tripod emplacements across more than five decades of continuous combat from Afghanistan to Ukraine.

Overview

The PKM (Pulemyot Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy — Modernized Kalashnikov Machine Gun) is a 7.62×54mmR general-purpose machine gun that has served as the standard company- and battalion-level sustained-fire weapon of Soviet and Russian forces since 1969. Gas-operated, open-bolt, and belt-fed, it balances portability (~9 kg with bipod) with full-power rifle-caliber range and penetration. With well over one million PK-pattern guns produced across original Soviet manufacture, licensed copies, and foreign variants, the PKM is one of the most widely fielded GPMGs in history, according to Wikipedia, and its modernized successor the PKP Pecheneg — introduced in the late 1990s — remains in front-line Russian service today.

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