The RPK: The Super Kalashnikov
Take an AK-47, give it a 75-round magazine then make it even more robust as to allow for long periods of full auto firing. What you would get might look like the RPK light machine gun and in a world where assault rifles are princes and the AK-47 is an aging king, the RPK is a god on the battlefield.
Machine guns were the deciding factor on modern battlefields ever since 1914. During World War One the US Army introduced the Browning M1918 BAR automatic rifle, a 16-pound select fire gun that spat 30.06 ammo out at 650-round per minute until its 20-round magazine ran out. These smaller, one-man machine guns could be issued down to the squad level to provide a huge increase in firepower. By World War II, the concept of a squad automatic weapon was widely spread and the Soviets wanted one.
Their first model, Vasily Degtyaryov’s RPD, came in at 16.31-pounds empty and brought a 100-round belt of 7.62x39mm ammo into the battlefield in 1945. While the RPD was a nice gun, it was heavy and used a milled receiver, which made production slow. In 1947 the Soviets went with the stamped receiver AK-47 and soon enough they were brainstorming about how to replace the RPD with a lighter and more AK-ish weapon.
This led to the RPK.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
