Page "Mikhail Kalashnikov" Paragraph 12

Over the course of his career he evolved the basic design into a weapons family.

The AKM (-Automatic Kalashnikov Modernized ) first appeared in 1963, which was lighter and cheaper to manufacture due to the use of a stamped steel receiver ( in place of the AK47's milled steel receiver ), and contained detail improvements such as a re-shaped stock and muzzle compensator.

From the AKM he developed a squad automatic weapon variant, known as the RPK (-Kalashnikov light machine gun ), and also the PK (-Kalashnikov machine gun ), which used the more powerful 7. 62 × 54R of the Mosin-Nagant rifle.

The PK series is a general purpose machine gun, which is cartridge belt-fed, not magazine-fed, as it is intended to fill the heavy tripod-mounted sustained fire role as well as the light, bipod-mounted role.

The common characteristics of his weapons are the simple, elegant engineering and their ruggedness and ease of maintenance in all operating conditions.