Russian Assault Rifles/Carbines/Machine Guns Thread: #2

The term "light machingun" came into use during WWI and describes a rifle caliber machingun with a weight of around 10 kg and a bipod and would be able to be carried and operated by 1 man.

Lots of things came into being during WWI, including the submachine gun which isn't even a machine gun.

The BAR was a heavy automatic rifle and was not really considered a light machine gun even though it was.

The Lewis gun fits into that same category.

Heavy machinegun used to mean tripod mounted but then as larger 12.7mm and 13mm models were introduced people started using the term "medium machingun" for the rifle caliber tripod mounted weapons and heavy machingun came to mean MGs with a caliber of 12.7mm and up.

No it didn't.

Medium and light were all about how the weapon was used and how it was operated. Medium machine guns were used in fixed positions by a machine gun crew that included more than two people... normally one fired and at least one kept it loaded, while the third was in command and directed the fire and gave orders to start or to cease fire. Light machine guns were carried into battle by soldiers but they always relied on other members of the squad to carry the ammo because it used lots and it was rather heavy.

Heavy calibre machine guns didn't really become common till after the 1930s, though there were several hand fired gatlings in large calibres too.

The soviet union diched the idea of medium machineguns with the introduction of the PK LMG.

The FN MAG (M240) is not a light machinegun and is only slightly heavier than the PKM.

The M60 is not a light machine gun and is heavier than the PKM too.

The correct term for a modern battle rifle calibre belt fed machine gun with a replaceable barrel is GPMG or general purpose machine gun.

It is used for the sustained fire role from a tripod and also from its own bipod in the mobile support role... it is both a medium and light machine gun... therefore GPMG.

Sqaud automatic weapons all have one thing in common and that is that they use intermediate cartriges rather than rifle cartirges just like the all of the Russian "ручной пулемёт" or "handheld machinguns" in english wheras LMGs are all in rifle caliber.

Bullshit... as I said and you just ignore... the full calibre 7.62 x 54mm R RP-46 had a removable barrel and belt feed or drum feed options (like the FN Minimi) and is an RP ...ручной пулемёт

So you have two weapons... or even three... one with battle rifle calibre and removable barrel and belt feed and drum feed called a hand held MG, and two weapons in intermediate calibre both with fixed barrels with one using mag feed and one using belt feed also called a hand held MG...

RP-46, RPK, and RPD.

They were all LMGs.

There is no such thing as a medium machinegun in the Russian army and the term ruchnoy pulemot is basically the Russian way of saying sqaud automatic weapon.

So what the fuck is a PKM?

Why is it P and not RP?

Why are western machine guns like the Gimpy (FN MAG) and the pig (M60) called general purpose machine guns and the PK is not when the PK is maybe 1-2kgs lighter... but its ammo is heavier...

Machinegun type is defined by the round it fires.

Bullshit.... is the GShG-7.62 is almost 20kgs... but it fires the same 7.62mm ammo as the PKM, so is it a light machine gun too?

Kalashnikov gunmaker to launch serial production of new pistol

The fact that they are putting it into production is nice, but I would prefer to hear they have contracts from the military to actually use them.

Personally I would also prefer they didn't bother with the 9x19mm round and went to a 9x21mm calibre like the SR-1 Gurza pistol and the SR-2 SMG round.

I mean NATO is in the middle of finding a replacement for the 9x19mm calibre so why waste time adopting such an old round in this day and age... there is little value in standardising to a foreign calibre used by your enemies... especially a calibre they are looking to replace now anyway.

We had one in our base. 1 RPK-74 and the rest were just AK-74s (mid-late 80s models). Of course that was 7 years ago and we were a backward unit even then so..

So not really widespread or popular?

I have seen recently that the PKP seems to be widely used amongst special forces, but I have watched a video of troops testing Ratnik gear and each of the two sides had soldiers armed with RPK-74s amongst them.

Personally I have had a look at the specs for the 5.45mm calibre guns Kalashnikov make... ie from the shortest barrel AKS-74U, through the AK-105 carbine, the AK-74M and the RPK-74 and compared the muzzle velocities with the same guns in 5.56mm calibre and it seems to be that the 5.45mm rounds performance improves with the longer barrel more than the 5.56mm rounds... which suggests to me that the RPK-74 gets the best performance from the round.

The 45 round mags don't offer a huge fire power increase of the rifles, but a 95 round drum would tip the scales and make it more interesting.

I remember reading a webpage by Valeriy Shilin (spelling) where he described the accuracy of the RPK as being rather exceptional... he was testing an armour piercing round, where he got a three round group of 18mm centre to centre at 300m, which I thought was pretty astounding.

9x21 is just plain shit if you are looking for something better than old Parabellum.

The Russian 9x21mm has nothing at all to do with the Israeli version and is very comparable with 357 magnum rounds in terms of performance... without the problems of the old rimmed case.

Pistol

https://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/handguns-en/russia-semi-automatic-pistols/sr1pm-eng/

SMG

https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/russia-submachine-guns/sr-2-veresk-eng/

To me, there is no plain difference between the IMI 9x21 and the russian 9x21 cartridges.

The Russian round operates at much higher pressure... if you used the Russian round in a weapon designed for the Israeli round the weapon would probably be destroyed and the operator injured or killed.

It is only the balls developed in Russia that are something different, but the two cartridges are just the same, from the dimensions up to the geometries.

And the geometry for the 308 winchester sporting cartridge and 7.62x51mm NATO are the same but the pressure ratings are different as well.

No problem for the Russians... huge potential problem for any operator of a weapon designed for the Israeli round if they are not careful what ammo they buy.

The 357 Sig is a totally different beast, easily giving more than 700 J with pretty standard FMJ balls. Obviously, its bottleneck design makes it fairly more expensive to produce, but performance wise is on a different, higher level even without any special ball.

Who was talking about the 357 SIG?

I was talking about the 357 magnum round, used in rifles and revolvers... can also be loaded with 38 special rounds because dimensionally they are similar and much lower pressure.

Given the higher V0 speed of almost any ball in the 357 Sig family, it would give SMGs an hefty boost both in penetration performance and practical range.

The special penetration ammo in the SR-2 SMG makes it effective to 100-130m or so... which is well beyond the normal distance you would use a SMG anyway.

It is not about raw power... it is the ability to penetrate armour, yet still be effective against soft targets... and it is.

What is more exciting is that Wolf Performance Ammo is reportedly putting 9x39mm ammo into mass production, which is totally awesome.

If that is the case then I will wait for that to become available and convert my M4 and perhaps buy a civilian bolt action in that calibre...

How old are you?

This is not a dick measuring competition.

This is about penetrating armoured vests at useful distances with pistol and SMG weapons.

The SR-2 is intended to engage enemy personnel at up to 200m and defeat body armour at 100m. 9x18mm ammo is not powerful enough to do that and the 9x19mm rounds they developed are marginal as well. Instead they use a 9x21mm round that does the job... all your bitching about round energy is meaningless.

Energy calculations are skewed by velocity, when actual penetration depends on the penetrator just as much as it does the speed at which it is moving on impact with the target.

Get over it.

9x21 is nothing else than a rebranded 9x19 Parabellum, and as such is more of a pistol caliber than an universal cartridge.

They already have pistols and SMGs in 9mm parabellum... including some very hot loaded versions not safe to use in NATO weapons and it was still not effective enough so they developed the 9x21mm round themselves... apart from the designation it has nothing in common with the Israeli round.

On a serious note: as 9x21 case is involved, it is by design just a 9x19 case slightly stretched and whose geometry is intended to ease the modification of any 9x19 gun's design into a 9x21 one without redesign from scratch the whole gun.

Of course it is... you are a genius... and can you give examples please... list all the 9X19mm calibre guns that the Russians are going to exploit by modification so they can fire their new 9X21mm ammo... ooops... there aren't any.

The company that developed the round also developed the two guns that use the ammo... the SR-1 Pistol and the SR-2 SMG have never used the 9x19mm or 9x18mm ammo and have only ever been used in the 9x21mm Russian round... it could fire the 9x21mm israeli ammo but the reverse is not true for safety reasons.

The SR-1 and SR-2 are used by the FSB but were originally developed for an Army requirement for a new pistol able to defeat body armour to 50m or so.

The 9x21mm ammo can penetrate two 2.8mm thick titanium armour plates plus 30 layers of kevlar body armour at 100m.

The two guns that fire the ammo are made by the same company that designed the ammo.

There is maybe some margin to increase energy compared to the 9x19 case, but it could not be anything dramatic, unless you are redesigning the case as well from ground up.

Are you retarded?

This is not a modified 9x19mm round.., it is not based on the 9mm parabellum and is not intended in any way to be compatible with said round.

The original Army requirement was to penetrate a standard flak vest at 50m.... it penetrates two titanium plates almost 3mm thick each and 30 layers of kevlar at 100m so it does the job.

So, it is about energy, after all, either you are using a conventional FMJ ball or something close to an APDS round in order to defeat body armour.

You haven't bothered listening to what I am saying or reading up on the round and are expounding what you think it probably does... you are totally wrong on both counts.

The penetration round stays in one piece until impact... if the target is hard the core separates and penetrates the armour... if it is soft then the entire round enters and the fibreglass shell fragments and is dragged through the soon to be corpse by the heavy core... armour penetration and high lethality against soft targets... entered service in the Russian FSB in 1996.

The only rationale to switch to the 9x21, in my opinion, is just the ease of conversion of previous design. Maybe you could need some strengthening of the receiver, but without having to trash all of the previlus calculations.

Incredible how you keep managing to be wrong... the previous design it is replacing is the 9x18mm Makarov pistol and there is no way it could handle a 9x19mm round let alone a 9x21mm.

On the other hand, in order to provide MBT crews, pilots and so on with effective PDWs, russian armed forces have resorted to provide them with AKSU, that proved themselves too difficult to control for not very trained personnel and equally ineffective past maybe 200 meters.

Now you are just making shit up... an AKSU is easy to control... the recoil on the 5.45mm round is small even with a short barrel and WTF is a tank crew doing shooting at targets more than 200m? What 9mm weapon would allow them to shoot at greater range? Only one I know of, that is the 9x69mm modification of the 338 Lapua magnum round they are adapting for their medium range sniper rifles.

You wondered why russian armed forces aren't placing orders for 9x21 chambered guns, my opinion is because it offers only incremental performance gains over the 9x19, without solving many long standing requirements such those of an effective PDW.

I wondered why they are adopting a dead cartridge that is considered obsolete already by the west when they have already developed a suitable solution in the 9x21mm round which does what they need.

For the same reason they are happy with the 5.45mm weapons and so there is no need for them to change to the 5.56mm weapons NATO seems so unhappy with.

By the way, what NATO armies are looking for, is a pistol/SMG/ small carbine cartridge able to provide better stopping power, better practical ranges, better penetration capabilities in an handgun ammunition format.

Don't care... what is important is that 9x19mm is not a good solution for their problem, so why should Russia adopt a cartridge that entered service in 1908... the only older cartridge in service would be the 7.62x54mmR from 1891.

It sounds a lot similar to what russian armed forces could be looking to in order to replace the 9x19 cartridge.

In this case they are talking about producing a pistol... one that has no military contracts at the moment so it really does not matter what its calibre is.

If you are armed with a pistol then there is no need for 100m plus range because you wouldn't hit anything at that range in a million years of shooting... unless you are playing a computer game...

The vast majority of pistols in Russian army service are 9x18 makarovs... not 9x19mm.

just like you could not modify the Makarovs to fire 9x19 because it is rather more powerful, you can't modify 9x19mm guns to 9x21 because it is considerably more powerful again.

My opinion is that 9x21 falls short to satisfy ANY of those requirements but it is my opinion only.

I am sure the FSB and the Russian state VIP protection service and some police units would be interested in your opinion as they have had the calibre in service since 1996 and have upgraded the weapon several times... I suggest you look up the SPS, the SR1, and the SR1M... they are upgrades of the same pistol they have been using for over 20 years.

Or I could just use my opinion... but I think the users who had specifications that were met by the ammo and the pistols carry more weight.

Requirements for pistol rounds generally include being able to kill the people you are likely to be shooting at.

NATO troops wear body armour as standard.

They are not saving money buying 9mm NATO if it does not do the job and that was the purpose of my original comment.

Right now the 9x21mm ammo is more expensive than 9x19mm but 9x19mm is rather more expensive than the 9x18nn ammo they are also using, and selecting the 9x21mm over the 9x19mm will mean the former will get cheaper... and because it is actually rather more effective it makes sense to do so.

All pistol rounds are special purpose cartridges and when used in pistols pretty bloody useless and yet expensive.

Use in SMGs make them effective, but still expensive and specialised.

Subsonic and supersonic 12.7mm rounds with very heavy projectiles to defeat body armour at combat ranges and also to take down enemy quietly at greater ranges and with better body armour than the 9x39mm can, yet when bullets start flying you can switch to higher performance supersonic rounds...

Engaging enemy hiding behind light cover, or wearing body armour...