What does anon think of this freaky weird magazine which has belt-fed links feeding into a regular magazine?
What does anon think of this freaky weird magazine which has belt-fed links feeding into a regular magazine?
What does anon think of this freaky weird magazine which has belt-fed links feeding into a regular magazine?
I dont.
Looks unreliable.
> mags <<< belts
>UNRELIABLE?
>UNFUCKING RELIABLE!
you're saying that belts are greater than mags, retard
Belts are far better than mags. Yes.
>I hope your mags spring breaks
An interesting and innovative solution to a problem which has yet to arise.
Apparently the soviets were fooling around with dual feeds and ways to get their rpks better and this was one of the results
Let's look at the development "logic"-
First, they had to be dissatisfied with the performance of existing box/drum mags. Of which there were "more than a few".
Second, they had to decide that "belts are where it's at, just look at the PK and how well it's belt carrier works".
Third, someone then pointed out that "Comrade, we do not have much in the way of belts for our 5,45X39 cartridge, we will have to develop one!"
Fourth, (likely CONSIDERABLE) time was spent developing said belt.
Fifth, a design study was held to determine how best to feed a length of 5,45X39 belted ammunition into the existing RPK74, with the conclusion being " Comrades, we should develop a box shaped belt holder akin to our PKM, with a contrivance atop it that strips the cartridge from the link, and presents it to the weapon in a manner almost identical to the magazine for which it was designed!".
In short, the Soviets developed a 100 round belt feed system, that behaves like a magazine feed system, for a weapon that already had a 75 round drum magazine available.
Meanwhile, In Belgium- (Image Related)
>for a weapon that already had a 75 round drum magazine available.
Some guys didn't like them but I heard the drum magazines getting better was part of the reason they dropped the pu project.
I'm rather skeptical about the dual feed systems altogether. Nearly all the anecdotes I've gotten is people prefer one or the other. Everyone who's told me they tried using regular mags for the m249 told me they didn't like it. Designs like the stoner 63's offshoots eventually ditched multiple feed systems. And I also keep reading/hearing reports of people preferring pkms over rpks or going back to m249s after using m27s or whatever drum mag, heavier barreled rifle with a bipod they use. I get logistic benefits and backups in case problems bit I can't help but wonder if it's a fool's errand.
Forgot to add I'm really also unsure if a magazine fed can do the job of a belt fed and if trying to replace one with the other or do both will just leave people unsatisfied or exclusively using one.
>I'm rather skeptical about the dual feed systems altogether.
Good, because they're bullshit.
If you are a SAW gunner, and are considering begging mags from the riflemen, things have already gone fabulously pear shaped, and you likely have other, far more important things to worry about.
Mechanically, the dual feed system of the 249/MINIMI is interesting and fun to play with.
Practically? It's a whole lot of why.
>If you are a SAW gunner, and are considering begging mags from the riflemen, things have already gone fabulously pear shaped, and you likely have other, far more important things to worry about.
Yeah, that's part of the problem for me too. You got the assistant gunner helping change barrels and lug ammo and there's still the need for regular mags? I get they use lots of ammo but how utterly ammo glutton must they be to still need more after that to the point of eating everyone elses?
>Everyone who's told me they tried using regular mags for the m249 told me they didn't like it.
>I have never seen anyone use it in any serious situation.
Of course they wouldn't like it. It's unreliable as hell. Your SAW will jam, and it will jam a lot. I would say about 22 of 30 rounds will jam. M249s being fed with mags don't like to work
IMO Pushing a magazine in a belt-fed machine gun is about as bad as jamming a monkey wrench into the inner workings of machinery. If Bucky wasn't a movie character, he'd be regretting going in with that setup.
The only times I have ever seen an M249 use a magazine outside shit sand giggles for fun is in movies. I have never seen anyone use it in any serious situation.
I've heard two anecdotes, and both resulted in fuckery and stoppages.
In PERFECT conditions, they (sometimes) work. Nothing would be lost if the design managed to wholly discard the mag feed system.
>Nothing would be lost if the design managed to wholly discard the mag feed system.
This is my take on this and Russia's new LMG. No time have I ever heard anyone say
>damn, I'm grateful we have this multiple feed system
It's just additional complexity. More pain. The Stoner 86 ditched the 63's system even though those actually worked in multiple configurations.
I got to use one in Afghanistan. machine gunner was down, we were rtb, so I got handed it. it wouldn't feed belts, so mags it was. he had always wanted to do it and never got to. so when I told him about it later, you would have thought I told him I fucked his grandma.
Did it work well?
not particularly, it still jammed a couple times, but multiple rounds without stoppage was better than a single shot. to be fair, I don't really expect anything to work well with cheese tortellini and blood all up in it.
That's nice to hear. Thanks for sharing.
>cheese tortellini and blood
Gonna need a story, anon.
Also, checked.
Me curious about the story.
lol that sight-over-bore distance. This homosexual is gonna shoot some purple cock.
yuo must be of confusion. if you make music very much too loud, then is new gun.
At least some sense prevailed, and they kept it to JUST belt feed, nice and simple like the old PK was.
I mean, the Soviets have created some wacky shit (RP46 Anyone?) , but to go through the effort of developing a belt to feed a magazine fed weapon, using a slap on delinker actuated by the charging handle is the acme of circuitous engineering.
The '63LMG ("Shorty") is what most wanted at the time.
Not the multitude of weirdness like the solenoid fired variant or the top mag fed "heavy" variant. CaddyGage should have saved that shit for the M69W/62, where someone might want a "system". But it was silly in 5.56.
It was silly but at the time, the US military was obsessed with consolidating different weapon roles into a single gun. The Stoner 63 is the result of a gun designer pushed to madness. “All right you fucking homosexuals, you want a gun that does everything?! ILL SHOW YOU A GUN THAT DOES EVERYTHING!”
All things considered, tests, anecdotes, and even modern people trying them say good things. Unlike the M249's magazine feed, the magazine-using configurations like rifle and bren-style top mag all worked decently. The top mag and especially belt fed being exceptionally good for many. Some even found the rifle mode disappointing, not because it sucked but because it was just alright compared to the amazing the others were. But yeah, everybody would rather have the LMG version to the point where later editions ditched everything else. When Stoner heard of the SAW program 10 years later he presented a simplified LMG only version of the Stoner 63(the Stoner 86) but declined to continue as he deemed the requirements unreasonable. That simplified gun would evolve into the KAC Stoner LMG.
Even in a best case scenario "everything works", it was seen as complex by many and later versions did away with the other converted modes. Really, just about the only way an "all-in-one" would be swapped back and forth is if they do several jobs so awesome that people MUST use them. Nobody today would think
>Okay, we're running out of AR/AK/whatever service rifle, we should convert some of our LMGs to rifles
Comparative advantages exist and they'll be used in far less roles than they're capable of, which will be less because the conversion mechanisms will add complexity and all the downsides that implies.
This is the same U.S. military that funded the development of a 5.56X45 Minigun, and squandered billions on a failed weapons system (SALVO/SPIW) that all but cemented the M-16 as "King Of The Hill" for decades to come, while convincing Colt to actually tool up to make a piston driven "replacement" that went nowhere.
Why?
"Because, Reasons".
>create a program to replace the main battle rifle
>cancelled
>try again
>cancelled
>try again
>cancelled
>ok i give up, let's pretend we're replacing the m249
>approved and funded
ladies and gentlemen, our defense procurement process at work
why do slavs always build some whizbang small arm that never sees the light of day?
Slav ingenuity is always snuffed by Slav retardation.
Engineering a good firearm isn't actually that hard. Plenty of people can do it. Especially in a nation like Russia with a long history of firearms production.
The problem is always getting that gun into production. Russia is poor as shit and has a huge culture of, 'good enough', when it comes to military equipment.
So you end up with an endless line of innovative or at least interesting prototypes that never enter production because no one will pay for them to be made.
Ingenious =/= pragmatic
Better to have 3 normal guns than 1 wonderwaffle that has unique everything and shits itself every other day
that's what superpowers do. you act like america doesn't have a million of their own dead end projects.
People try this all the time, it ain't just them. Just look at how many gimmick guns we have or failed attempts to replace the M4? We've got straight up sci-fi looking stuff like pic or the XM29 OICW. Sometimes we're all just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.
that's the most morbidly obese gun i've ever seen.
A true American design
What do you think of this?
NTA, but this is suHispaniciously similar to a Morita Mark III assault rifle. I get the feeling the project was managed by a Starship Troopers larper.
Lots of these look more like movie props than firearms.
I only heard about this thing because of the half life 2 beta. The uncircumcised XM8
poverty.
all questions lead to poverty.
>Third, someone then pointed out that "Comrade, we do not have much in the way of belts for our 5,45X39 cartridge, we will have to develop one!"
>Fourth, (likely CONSIDERABLE) time was spent developing said belt.
They had the RPD belt retard
Way to miss the point, you goober.
5.45 works fine in an rpd belt though
That's just how designing a jury-rigged system into an already existing weapon works. The Pedersen device was no better. The M249 is obviously going to be more elegant by dint of actually being designed for the task.
The Pedersen device is pretty hilarious in and of itself, especially when you realize that it is not a simple drop in modification, and required an '03 with more than some minor alterations.
Oh boy, if you think it's limited to the Soviets, are you in for an entire universe of fun filled hilarity when you get to U.S. small arms development in the second half of the 20'th century.
you don't wait for the problems to arise anon, you go out and make them happen.
I will believe it when I see it fire more than twice without a malfunction.
Cool if reliable and not delicate. Is it too long for bipod?
it's the consolation prize stemming from a program for an all-in-one LMG with impossible requirements, meant to replace the rpk74. the first iteration of that project was so unreliable that one of the designers (dragonuv iirc) called it "allergic to water". after a few stages of jumping thru hoops to make what the brass wanted, the brass decided they didn't want it.
so, it's reliable in the sense that it reliably reduced the minspec back to "just a fucking belt + box after all, then, you politburo retards?"
same designer (vladimir kamzolov) did the drums
That is a very interesting way to position a drum. I can think of some advantages right off the bat to doing it this way. Is there a reason more guns don't do this?
Same reason as all other drums.
>costs 10x more than a 30 rd mag
>no way to comfortably them on your body
Always thought these would put unnecessary stress on the retention mechanisms, lot of weight hanging. Is there no extra tab at the front?
where did you find that image?
from max popenker. modernfirearms = world.guns.ru. here's a quick video he did with the пoплин / poplin program prototypes
i think it was tested. checking with someone more knowledgeable
oh shit it is actuated by the bolt handle, that can be fun
What I wanna know, is HKs "linkless" ammo box design they were working on with their HK21Es, but then refused to elaborate any further when no one bought it
String.
Do you understand how an F-15E/F-22 ammo trey works?
Yes, but those have agenerator hooked up to a jet engine. I can't imagine carrying around an 80s era battery to give the necessary juice for a shoulder fired weapon
Simple.
They just but a big rubber band with a crank to tension it in a box. You just dumped all the bullets in the box.
Then it just squeezed closed and pushed everything to the top.
No hold on I think I see an HK van outside.
Wonder what they wa
better check on that anon i think something funni is going o
Anons, whats happening? Are you's alri
Knock it off, it's not like HK hired candlej
I'm suddenly reminded of weird magazines like the Standschütze Hellriegel 1915. The magazine was connected to the weapon by means of a flexible connector. It LOOKED belt-fed but wasn't.
not as cool as the m249s dual feed
Speaking of dual feed, the Soviets tried that with the PU guns that never got officially adopted. It would've been their equivalent to the M249. Supposedly their newest RPL-20 is inspired by it.
never seen this, looks fuckin silly with the bakelite
I have no idea how it would've turned out had they adopted it. Apparently it had some pros but also was too complex and failed some trials. OP's magazine was one of the many things they tried in that time.
?si=MQUw3SQG_SXSAokM gave a relatively positive review but I'm not sure how reliable source is,
Pretty cool imo
How does this even work? What bot modifications are needed to allow space for the belt?
According to https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/10/09/spu-experimental-rpk-74-belt-feeding-adapter/
>This device is attached to the RPK-74 just like a standard magazine. On its bottom portion, the SPU has a provision to mount an ammunition box containing 100 or 200 rounds of 5.45x39mm ammunition loaded into a non-disintegrating belt. The belt is fed from the right side of the converter. Inside the device, the linked ammunition is squeezed upwards from the belt links and gets presented for feeding in a pattern identical to the magazine feeding. The mechanism of SPU feeding device is powered by an external lever that is attached to the charging handle of the weapon and powers the mechanism using the reciprocating motion of the bolt carrier group. The empty belt comes out from the left side of the converter.
i think its cool as fuck
russians came up with a better design where basically the top of the ammo box acts as it's own feed tray cover.
all an AR would need to do this is a lower receiver with a slightly different magwell.
The RPL is allegedly inspired by this. But from what I've heard this design as both an older design that's been on the backburner and only getting some prominence now. That and some doubt it'll be actually coming out in any time soon.
So the delinker is built into the mag and operated by the reciprocating charging handle?
How exactly do the now delinked rounds get into a position to be picked up by the bolt?
As for the concept it seems like it's going to be way worse than quad stack or drum mags that offer the same capacity without as many moving parts.
The 5.45 is a push feed cartridge, so it probably wouldn't really matter, would it?
it would make belt changes faster at least
Just make everything belt fed. Problem solved.
It was done.