RPK

The RPK is a Soviet light machine gun and squad automatic weapon designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and adopted by the Soviet Army in 1961 as part of an effort to standardize infantry small arms around a single Kalashnikov-pattern action, sharing most of its internal mechanism with the AKM assault rifle it was designed alongside. Compared with the AKM, the RPK has a longer, thicker barrel intended to withstand sustained automatic fire without overheating as quickly, a bipod for stable firing, and a reinforced wooden buttstock, while still firing the same 7.62x39mm intermediate cartridge from box or drum magazines rather than a belt. It replaced the earlier RPD machine gun in Soviet service, was manufactured in large numbers and exported or license-built across the Warsaw Pact and allied states, and variants of it remain in frontline use with numerous armed forces and irregular groups around the world into the twenty-first century.