Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I have just a little bit of commentary that I want to give you
on a video that I have had, understandably,
several people send me the link to already.
And this is video from I believe a French television station,
showing a Ukrainian automotive shop
that is rebuilding captured Russian machine guns for Ukrainian use.
Now ... I think it's worth going into a little bit more detail on what's going on here
because it's both interesting and it's not something brand new, this has certainly been done before.
So what's going on is essentially Ukraine has destroyed and captured a lot of ... Russian tanks
and other armoured vehicles during the invasion of Ukraine.
And tanks in particular are often armed with coaxial machine guns.
The idea is a tank armament is going to be not just the main cannon,
which is used primarily for engaging other armoured vehicles,
but also usually two machine guns that are used for other things.
For example, if a tank runs into enemy infantry in the field it's not really that effective
to try and use the main gun on them, ... that's not what it's designed for.
Instead what they will do is design the tank to have a machine gun
located coaxially to the main cannon, generally just off to one side.
And so the gunner can choose to use a machine gun instead of the main cannon.
The machine gun is of course far more effective at engaging infantry on the ground
or light vehicles like trucks and that sort of thing.
Typically they will also have another machine gun mounted on the top of the turret of the tank.
This is intended to be used for anti-aircraft use.
Those are often .50 calibre guns, NSVs and maybe Kord machine guns,
I'm a little less familiar with those.
But when it comes to the coaxial guns in the current Russian tanks that we see in Ukraine,
the upgraded T-72s, the T-80s and the T-90s,
those coaxial guns are PKs, they're specifically PKTs.
So the PK is the standard Russian machine gun from, oh boy, it dates back to the 1960s.
It is an outstanding machine gun, originally designed by Kalashnikov,
and ... it was made in a variety of configurations.
So of course there's the standard infantry version
with a shoulder stock, and a pistol grip, and a bipod,
and it's a general purpose machine gun for the infantry.
But in order to just simplify logistics and manufacture of machine guns,
they made the PK in a tank version as well.
Something that you could mount as a coaxial gun.
The difference being the coaxial version has a little bit heavier barrel generally,
because the tank's going to carry it, so you don't need to worry about how much the gun weighs.
And then it doesn't have a pistol grip, or a visible trigger, or a shoulder stock,
because this thing is being mounted mechanically into a tank turret.
And it's going to be fired by a driver's remote control firing system just like the main cannon.
... Back in the 1930s there was basically a big ... plunger really on the side of a tank cannon,
you'd slam that thing and it'd fire the gun.
Well, not any more, things are electronically controlled.
And so coaxial PKT machine guns are actually fired by a solenoid trigger, an electronic trigger.
So the Ukrainians now capturing or destroying Russian tanks
are able to salvage these PKT coaxial machine guns.
And the fundamental mechanism of the gun is identical
to the PK machine guns that they are used to using, that are excellent machine guns.
But it's hard to use them without a bipod, or a trigger, or a pistol grip, or a shoulder stock.
And so that is what this ... automotive shop that was featured is doing.
They have designed essentially a bolt-on shoulder stock / trigger / pistol grip mechanism
that they can mount onto a PKT machine gun that's been removed from its armoured vehicle.
And it looks like they're actually doing the same thing to some of the .50 calibre guns.
Like I said, I'm a little bit less familiar with those, so I'm not sure exactly which models.
... Sometimes the ... anti-aircraft machine guns mounted on tank turrets
will actually have a regular trigger, sometimes they have spade grips.
I'm not sure exactly what the configuration is on the current use Russian tanks, so.
But you can see in the video that they have at least one .50 cal in there that they're working on.
It is an interesting historical comparison to point out that during the Winter War
the Finns did the exact same thing with, well at that point, Soviet tanks
and their mounted machine guns, their coaxial machine guns.
The difference is at that point, first off, not all the guns were coaxial,
some of them were hull mounted machine guns. That was a thing in World War Two.
You would have sometimes the driver, sometimes a separate gunner,
... a crew member in the tank would have a machine gun mounted in the hull,
or sometimes like in the back of the turret of the tank, that could be used to engage infantry.
And ... during the Winter War those guns were "DT", in this case "T" is tank.
I'm not sure of the exact word in Russian, but it stands for tank.
Today PKT is "Pulemyot Kalashnikova", Kalashnikov machine gun.
Back in the Winter War it was a "DT", it was a Degtyarev machine gun.
And what's interesting about the Degtyarev tank guns is they were actually designed for dismounted use.
So they came with clamp-on bipods that were stored in the tank,
and they had collapsing shoulder stocks that stayed on the gun all the time.
The idea being if the tank crew themselves had to abandon their vehicle,
they could pull the machine gun out, take it with them, and have some armament.
So in the Winter War when the Finns would destroy or capture Soviet tanks,
they could pull out those DT machine guns and use them as is without any modification.
And ... there's a lot of photographic evidence of Finnish soldiers doing just that:
fighting as infantry with captured Russian DT machine guns.
Anyway, it's a neat bit of historical comparison, it's interesting to see this being done in Ukraine.
Oh, and actually one last interesting point, this is not unique to the Ukraine.
It's interesting that this sort of conversion ... was actually being done in the United States
for a while not that long ago.
There has always been a vibrant home-building firearms community in the United States.
And from the 1990s through the 2010s or so, parts kits were pretty cheap and available,
and there were a lot of people building semi-auto firearms out of machine gun parts kits.
And PKs were of course always a popular gun because they are such a fantastic light machine gun.
But for a long time PK kits (or PKM, modernised, kits) were really pretty hard to get.
But there were a couple of companies that were importing PKT kits.
Same thing actually with [SGMT] kits, ... the later World War Two Russian coaxial tank guns.
And these things all came with solenoid triggers, just as they do today.
And for a home builder in the US ... rebuilding the receiver as a semi-auto was one thing,
but then they also had to actually modify the firing mechanism
to go from a solenoid trigger that came in the parts kit
to building up some sort of shoulder stock and hand trigger.
Exactly like these Ukrainian mechanics are doing.
So nothing really new under the sun, it's interesting to see this happening.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video, hopefully this was
enlightening, educational, and gave you a little more insight into what's going on in the video.
So definitely check out that original video, I've got just a little clip of it here for you to see,
but the whole thing is about three minutes long, and I will link to it in the end cards of this.
Thanks for watching.