[Partner 2025] Zastava Unveils New Machinegun Chambered in 6.5 Grendel
These days, when you roam around a defense expo, it is really difficult to find anything new and different. At the end of the day, weapons that use the same caliber and roughly the same barrel length will have very similar capabilities, regardless of cosmetic features, a country of origin or marketing claims about “increased lethality”.
To actually increase the capabilities of the weapon, you need to use a different round, which by itself is a considerable undertaking, since you have to significantly change the supply chain, from manufacturing to manuals and training. The US Army has been attempting to do that since 2017, but there is another military that made similar attempts even earlier - the Serbian army.
In 2017, The Firearm Blog reported about the first demonstration of M17, a military rifle chambered in 6.5 Grendel. Since then, the design has evolved and gone through significant changes. Now, the Serbian arms industry has made the second logical step, introducing a light machine gun in the same caliber.
The new machine gun is based on the M84, the Serbian version of PKM. The weight of the prototype is 6.6 kilograms (14.5 pounds), which is comparable to the M250 designed by SIG.
The machine gun has a folding and adjustable stock with an additional cheek piece and a handguard with KeyMod slots. Many might find it unusual, since KeyMod is less popular today, but it was adopted by the Serbian Ministry of Defence back in 2017; new accessories have to be reverse compatible with existing standards.
Overall, transition to 6.5 Grendel seems like an ambitious step for the Serbian military, however, many are concerned about the logistics in case of full-scale war - recent combat experience in Ukraine shows that even most basic supplies, such as ammo, can become hard to come by.
Vladimir Onokoy is a small arms subject matter expert and firearms instructor. Over the years he worked in 20 different countries as a security contractor, armorer, field analyst, product manager, and consultant. His articles were published in the Recoil magazine, Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defence Journal, Overt Defense and Silah Report. He also worked as the historical consultant for movies and weapon history books, namely "Vickers Guide: Kalashnikov" series, "Small Arms of WW2: Soviet Union" and the 3rd edition of "AK-47: The Grim Reaper". Email: machaksilver at gmail dot com
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Think outside the box and win! If 7.62x39 is good enough, all weapons chambered for that obsolete cartridge become superb when chambered in 6.5 Grendel, which is based on the 7.62 Russian case.
I agree with BeoBear. More 6.5 Grendel is a good thing. Very underrated cartridge. I shoot both Bolt and gas guns isn’t that carlber.