We Need to Talk About the PK Machine Gun

A Soviet PK gunner on exercise alongside a BMP-1 equipped motor rifle infantry squad, presumably in the 1960s.

Kalashnikov’s Machine Gun Almost Matches the AK Rifle in Global Reach and Emulation

The PK family of general purpose machine guns have been an enduring presence in armed violence around the world and have been copied in diverse forms. Beginning its career in the Soviet Army in 1961, PKs are almost as omnipresent as their AK rifle cousins in ongoing Middle Eastern, African and South Asian warzones — either in the hands of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan government soldiers, Taliban, ISIL and Kurdish militia or mounted within Soviet era armoured vehicles and the backs of pickup trucks serving all of the above factions. Although PKs and their knock offs have been wielded by diverse combatants ranging from 1980s Soviet conscripts humping the mountains of Afghanistan to rebels in Libya’s desert wastes overthrowing Colonel Gadaffi in 2011, they have not received the same level of pop culture familiarity in Joe Public’s mind as the M60 machine gun which got its spotlight in the Vietnam War.

Origins: A Quest to Replace Many Guns with One

At the end of World War 2, the Soviet Army counted a multitude of machine guns in its armouries. Infantry squads possessed the DPM Degtyarev light machine gun with its distinctive gramophone record shaped magazine and its belt fed successor, the RP-46. The medium Goryunov SG-43/SGM and heavy Maxim…