#12.7x108mm

The hungriest beast of them all on this blog is our Photo Of The Day. It consumes hundreds of images every month, and it has been doing so for over 8 years. Today we have one of the coolest pictures for a while, just look at that NSV machine gun hammering those 12.7×108 mm rounds. In Finland, it’s called the 12.7 ITKK 96. Task Force Red Cloud, headquartered by elements of CLB-6, has recently been deployed in Finland to support the Exercises SYD 2022 and Freezing Winds 2022.

Photo Of The Day: We’ve rounded up a few of our favorites for your viewing pleasure today. Grab a coffee or a glass of water, sit down, and relax for a while. Above you see a British soldier firing his SA80 during the Vigilant Fox exercise in Finland, with an interesting mix of firearms from around the world.

Yesterday, we took a look at the new Snipex Monomakh anti-material rifle released by this Ukrainian company at the Arms and Security 2021 exhibition recently held in Kyiv, Ukraine. Besides this expansion of their anti-materiel rifle line, the company has also introduced a new belt-fed heavy machine gun chambered in 12.7x108mm. The new HMG is called Laska K-2. It does look similar to the M2 Browning machine gun but many key design elements are completely different. Let’s take a closer look.

During the  International Military-Technical Forum ARMY-2018, Russian TsKIB SOO of Tula has introduced two new civilian firearms that are based on the company’s military products. The two guns are the civilian versions of the PP-2000 SMG and the OSV-96 .50 caliber rifle. Let’s take a brief look at each of these firearms.

A couple of Russian web sources have published images of a .50 caliber (12.7x108mm) anti-materiel rifle said to be domestically manufactured in self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. They call it an anti-sniper rifle. They also nicknamed it “Donchanka” which means a woman from Donetsk.

This year’s IPAS 2017 held in Tehran featured a number of designs seen previously such as Iran’s 7.62x54mm PKM GPMG, and 12.7x108mm Dshk Heavy Machine Gun copies. But of particular interest was what appears to be a shortened PKM with a barrel cut to around 14 inches, a telescoping butt stock based on the AR15, polymer pistol grip, and what appears to be a canvas or polymer assault drum. Also notice the shortened compensator and relatively simple sling attached, especially if the machine gun is designed to be used in an “Assault Phase”. From a cursory glance, it appears that the conventional Iranian Infantry is armed with small arms of local licensed manufacture by the Defense Industries Organization such as MG3s, MP5s, and G3 rifles (currently this appears to be transitioning to Stoner based designs). Whereas the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is equipped with locally produced or imported Soviet bloc weaponry such as PKMs or AKMs. If we were to ever see this PKM variant in use by Iranian security forces, a likely place would probably be with the IRGC in a smaller team or special operations capacity.

Dickson has shared another factory tour with us. This time he went to Hungary to check out Sero Engineering, the people how make the barrel recoiling GM6 Lynx.

The editor says: This article was contributed by our friend Vitaly who runs Rem870.com, a blog and forum dedicated to the Remington 870. 

The 6P62 is a beast of a gun. It is a magazine fed machine gun that chambers the Russian 12.7x108mm cartridge, a round that is slightly more powerful than a .50 BMG.