After the Second World War, during which various types of weapons were adopted by the belligerent parties, a situation arose when the active armies contained samples of weapons that had different calibers. The situation was aggravated by the fact that cartridges of different lengths were used with the same caliber. This did not meet uniform standards. The concerned departments of all states - participants of the past hostilities have set a clear task for the designers to create uniform models of weapons, in particular a single machine gun, which will be discussed in our article. The most productive solution to this problem was the designers - armed men from the United States. But they also had problems with the introduction of this weapon into the mass armament of military units.
The need to create a single machine gun
After the tests, the T161E2 sample was delivered to the armament of the North American army, which was introduced into the US army under the abbreviation M60.
Initially, it seemed that this is a powerful and modern weapon, but the designers overdid it with its characteristics.
As a result, the main quality of the machine gun suffered - its reliability; during long-term operation, cases of malfunction of the machine gun became more frequent, which began to "understand" spontaneously, which was by no means the best characteristic in hostilities. In addition, the presence of direct attachment of thrust mechanisms (bipods) to the barrel during firing led to the fact that replacing the barrel with an overheated product became a disaster. There were other disadvantages, such as unauthorized opening of fire with heavy wear of the mechanisms, the possibility of improper installation of the gas vent mechanism in a hot state, etc.
By the way, if you face the truth, on the basis of the M60 lightweight products M60E3 and M60E4 were made, in which the previous shortcomings were taken into account. Now these machine guns are on the staff of the weapons of the "Rangers" and "Berets" of the US Special Forces.
The Soviet government set before the GRAU of the USSR Ministry of Defense the task of creating a unified machine gun for the USSR Armed Forces, and the best specialists - designers of our Motherland were sent to fulfill this task.
Creation of the Nikitin TKB-015 machine gun
The task set by the Government of the USSR was extremely laconic: to create, within a year, a maximum of one and a half, a single machine gun for the USSR Armed Forces. There was no time for the development and testing of prototypes, and the talented Russian gunsmith Nikitin G. I. follows the path of least resistance: it takes as a basis the American unfinished version of the M60, already used in Vietnam, carries out the necessary modernization and submits a sample for testing.
A similar task was received by the Kalashnikov Design Bureau, which already then, anticipating the market demand for a single machine gun, was working on the creation of the well-known PKM machine gun.
From 1962 to 1967 G. I. Nikitin, in close cooperation with Yu. M. Sokolov and V. S. Degtyarev, developed a 7.62-mm light single machine gun TKB-015, as well as various options for easel devices, bipods, a closed-type light machine-gun belt, both made of steel, and from plastic, including boxes for cartridges. Nikitin's product was notable for its small mass, weighing just over 6 kilograms.
Features of this machine gun
The design features of this machine gun have nothing to do with the previous inventions of this talented creative team. First of all, this concerns the gas vent mechanism, the main constituent element in the production of a shot. With the barrel part stationary, the powder gases escaped through a hole in a rigidly fixed barrel, which was connected to the barrel part by four screws. A wedge-type artillery bolt is used, which locks the barrel channel, entering the connection with the grooves on the aft part of the barrel mechanism.
With trigger - no new developments, a trigger-type version is taken. The firing mechanism is used only for automatic fire, single shots are not provided. Ammunition is supplied from the SGM machine-gun belt. The sleeve is thrown forward, the extractor mechanism is located under the barrel.
Reasons for refusing to adopt the Nikitin TKB-015 machine gun
The official reasons for abandoning this single machine gun are its unreliability when firing in frosty and rainy times. During test tests, TKB-015 misfired at low temperatures and with precipitation in the form of rains and sleet. As for the firing characteristics of TKB-015 and PKM, they are approximately the same. According to testers, TKB-015 did not like dustiness very much, because its parts were lightweight, and PKM passed the exam in any active environment.
