History of the PK, PKM, and Pecheneg w/ Max Popenker 

I hope Max Popenker knows how much we appreciate his valuable input here on RU-vid. If you ever see this, thanks Mr. Popenker.

I could listen to Max speak about guns forever.

"Keeping your adversaries busy and well behaved" Must be the nicest way to put, 'pulping them into meat soup with machine gun rounds' that I've ever heard.

"to keep adversaries busy and well behaved." I could listen to this dude all day.

When I served overseas in the Marine Corp, whenever we encountered a pkp/pkm gunner who knew what they were doing and had a solid firing position, I can tell you that we worked to eliminate that battlefield target as quickly as we possibly could. It's a great weapon for pinning down a fairly large element while other fighters move up into closer positions. One encounter that specifically comes to mind is when we were moving through an open field that did have some shallow "trenches" to an extent, we were engaged by what we estimated to be roughly 20-30 Taliban fighters and they had 2 gunners operating these weapons. Thankfully it seemed like neither of them were what I would consider to be experts at shooting but even so they were able injury 3 of our guys and ended up unfortunately killing 2 of us. We got pinned down by these two gunners until we were able to call in some close air support which did take out both gun positions but in that time the rest of the fighters were able to move forward into the compound area that we were trying to get into ourselves, so we ended up having to engage them and ultimately eliminate those targets ourselves with small arms fire and maneuver tactics, which thankfully we were able to do without anymore casualties. My point though, is that these types of weapons are so simple and easy to use that even relatively untrained and inexperienced fighters were still able to properly suppress our unit with overwhelming fire that was accurate enough to make us unable to make any forward movements towards hard cover. Weapons such as these have the ability to provide a smaller light infantry unit with the capability of maneuvering squad sized elements into better firing positions so they can use their small arms rifle fire to place much more accurate shots down range and on target resulting in the ability to inflict real casualties on the enemy etc. We never wanted to run into ANY belt fed weapons, but these ones in particular were definitely the types that we hoped to encounter the least, ya know? Very solid, simple, and reliable machine guns that could be easily operated by even the youngest and most inexperienced fighters over there.

Need to know history of vss vintorez please.

It’s fucking insane the PKM, developed in the Cold War, is still the lightest platform of its kind. Gun shoots vibe checks for days. Damn the NFA.

great info; the PKM is one of the best GPMGs on the planet for sure

I think I speak for most of us here when I say, "Let Max know how much we appreciate his time to do these videos with you Ian." (You too of course :D) I love the anecdotes like the Maxims still being used until the 1980's to prptect against human wave attacks.

Massive respect for people who can translate technical information between languages, let alone making technical matters commonly accessible in the same language.

Tank you for the subtitles. Max speaks better English than I speak Russian, but his Russian accent still makes it difficult for me to keep up at times without help.

It's so cool to hear that Max had a part in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Great stuff and always interresting to hear Max!

I can't get enough of Max :)

19:22 ЦНИТОЧМАШ, not Izhmash, Ian. It's those guys who made AS Val and APS underwater AR.

I love this. Hi Max! Come back for more videos please. I don't know if Max is Russian, but I would bet lots of enthusiasts who study the firearms of their native lands would be fantastic sources of information.

19:25 He was talking about TsNIITochMash, not Izhmash.

Thanks mr.McKellen for those amount of content that you provide to us.

Please get Max to speak about the VSS and AS VAL on through to the SR-3M and 9A-91 special forces weapons, the subsonic 9x39 is an awesome munition and the weapons that use it are fascinating.

1 person got caught by his boss shooting sniper ball

Thanks Ian for subtitling all Max's speech, it's really big job! Few very minor corrections from me: 1) "IzMash" should be "TsNIITochMash", as "Central Scientific Research Institute of Precise Machinery" 2) "More modern steel" from Max means "newer kind of steel" :)

Ian I can't stress enough how great it is that you added subtitles to Max who is obviously doing his best with English. I believe it was Military History Visualized that had a German museum curator a few weeks back who spoke some English but was virtually unintelligible and could have really used subtitles be it for clarification or direct translation. Thanks for putting in the extra work!

These videos and transcripts should for sure go into the Forgotten Weapons archive project, together with some notes on Max's background and sources. It's invaluable stuff on Soviet small arms development.

Well, Nikitin and Sokolov still got their chance by developing the successor to the "Dushka", the NSV 12,7 mm.

A friend of mine was in a special forces unit in Afghanistan, and he said everyone ADORED the PKM. Their Humvees were usually issued with either a Ma Deuce (M2 hmg in .50BMG) or an M134d minigun from Dillon Aero, and then 2 m240's for the other static mounts. But then they would literally go to the local arms bazaar in whatever village they were near, and buy up as many PKMs as they had and mounted those things at every other point on the vehicle that could take a weapon. They were often leftover captured ones from when the Mujahideen were going toe to toe with the Soviets, but they just worked! Plus, even if they were in some God forsaken corner of the world, ammo was still so easy to come by. I've seen pictures of Special Forces Humvees that looked like a freaking porcupine of death, with one M2, two m240's, one 249 SAW, and THREE PKMs hanging off it! They just had them there so that if one of the other guns choked, or they ran through a whole box of ammo on one of the 240's and didn't have time to reload, they could just swing it out of the way, grab one of PKMs, and continue doing work. Yeah, the PKM is incredible.

ian you have done us proud by finding this guy. he seems a wealth of information on soviet/Russo arms and i look forward to the series you may end up doing

Best weapons for ridding Zone of mutants. Hard to aim though.

Always great to have Max on the show! Thank you both. Rich.

Just excellent. I hope to see more of these videos in the future with him!

I think we could try a Historical Arms "exchange student program" with Max and Ian. But just temporarily.

I love Max's knowledge on these subjects and it's great that you can get him to work with you on Russian arms, absolutely no complaints on that front, but I do have a small suggestion: If at all possible try to figure out a way for him to get a bit better microphone (you can get a good USB large diagram microphone for 40€, Superlux E205U as an example, and you don't even need to go that high end really), and have him record his part on his end and send it to you for editing together. It could improve his audio quality dramatically. His accent isn't that thick in itself, but combined with the slightly poor audio quality it can make him a bit hard to understand at times. Of course the subtitles work, but this kind of content would make for a great podcast type listening experience too.

The PK series has always been my favorite MG (after the MG42/3 anyway), so this video was a real treat.

Awesome, awesome interview! Max is the best! Thx to the both of you for producing.

A tiny bit difficult to understand, but incredibly fascinating and informative! Thanks for the subtitles, they helped on those tricky accented words, but, this guy is fantastic, please have him on more!

Thanks very much Ian and Maxim for the very interesting interview! Great insights, pictures and comments. Would love to see more of such collaboration!)

Max Popenker's fire arms blogs are nearly second to none. I've been using his websites for over 10 years now. Huge fan. Great to see my two favorite fire arms "lecturers" together.

I know Max personally, and I can say is a first class Gentleman with a vast culture in everything more than weapons

Really enjoying having Max coming in to the videos and sharing his knowledge. I would like to see a video on the VSS Vintorez that would be awesome.

What about PKP bullpup? Looks really kinda weird, I'd love to see Forgotten Weapons video on that.

Thank you for this video, for the interview, and FOR the subtitles! ^_^ I wish more people put subtitles into their videos.

That info about Maxim being used until late 80s @9:33 is the most surprised Ian I've seen.

the quality of this channel keeps improving with each video! keep up the great work!

A brilliant presentation of the history and development highlighting reasoned advances. Max is a captivating, fascinating, lecturer. Thank you both.

That was valuable and interesting. Thanks for putting this together.

"Pappy-anchor", Ian, that'll make it easier :-). Thanks Max, very interesting history. I don't normally get to hear a great deal about the internal development and decisions of Soviet/Russian arms.

Garand Thumb just did a video of a PKM, now Ian. Do a collab already, guys :D And, ofc, спасибо вам, Максим, за такое дельное, качественное интервью. Оч ценим, оч любим

I really appreciate Max's knowledge. Very insightful and always a pleasure.

wow, so informative!! thanks so much for inviting this guest on your channel!!

Always epic to hear informed commentary from Mr. Pepenker. Thank you, sir.

This is one of your best series. Thanks to you and Max.

1 RPD user disliked this >:(

Previously I found it a little difficult to understand Max, and I still do but once you get over that (thanks for the subtitles btw) he's great to listen to. Very well formulated and has so much interesting stuff to say.

Looking forward to more videos with Max. Very interesting.

24:39 Having flashbacks of that MG nest in Cordon from Stalker Clear Sky.

Interesting how the relative poverty of the Soviets forced them to drop inferior designs quicker than the US military which also seemed to make them adopt innovative designs more quickly as well.

Sadly, I probably will not see Goryunov MG disassembly and range performance on this channel, yet, another thank you for a good episode, Ian.

I like how you can tell Ian is getting happy and exited by learning

Thank you, Mr Popenker!! These videos are very informative and interesting. ALSO, I find your English very understandable, though the captioning is nice. :D

It shouldn't be difficult to design a PKM derivative for 7.62x51 ammunition. The key would be incorporating the Browning style pull-out disintegrating link belts rather than drastically redesigning the PKM for the current NATO push-through belts (as Poland has).

AS Val and VSS Vintorez would be interesting

Большое спасибо Максиму за его труд. Ещё будучи подростком я наткнулся на его сайт и почерпнул там огромное количество знаний о стрелковом оружии! Thanks a lot to Max for what he's done. When I was a teenager I received a planty of useful information about firearms from his site. And a big deal of pictures ofc :)

AN EXTRAORDINARY THANK YOU AND KUDOS TO BOTH OF YOU BRILLIANT GENTLEMEN FOR THE TROVE OF INFORMATION (AT THE ENCYCLOPEDIC LEVEL) ABOUT THE PKM AND IT'S DIFFERENT GENERATIONS.

Thanks , Ian and Max . Well done lads!!

I love how interested Ian looks trough the whole thing.

Another great episode with Max!

Yugoslav M84 in the wars in 90-s was called "Sejač smrti" The sower of death, which is a ode to its effectiveness.

Crazy that 2 days ago I was thinking about the pk series machine guns and wanted to learn more and then here we are today with this gem

@Max Popenker "...make your own machine gun" Actually Poland did, it was the Kbkm wz. 2003, and it was in development after 1996, the UKM-2000 won over that design during trials. Then in 2015 there was another trial and the Negev lost to the UKM-2000P. Let's put this into perspective: The PKM weighs about 7.5kg with a barrel length of 658mm. The Negev NG-7 has a barrel length of 508mm and weighs 7.95 kg. The UKM-2000 has a barrel length of 547mm and weighs 8.4 kg. The UKM-2000P weighs 10kg and has a barrel length of 540mm. From this I can conclude that Poland must REALLY like the PKM even if it's a PKM with feed system borrowed from the MG3 with barrel 10cm less and weighing more by a kg or two even.

A video on this machine gun has been long overdue . I can't believe I stumbled into it on the day it was published . The PKM is my all time favorite GPMG .

i love the PKM! so this is another awesome Video about his history - thanks to both of you! Edit:maybe i missed something but did he mentioned the bulpup version of the pkm too? and a big thx btw for the subtitles ^^

Once again the Czechs have an input to a design. Perhaps a vid on their influence over the years on Firearms design? A pleasure to listen to an expert in his field.

I love these interviews with Max.

I really like these historical videos with guests

Excellent speech, thanks Max.

Thank you very much Max for this interesting history lesson!

Been waiting for this one, nice.

Very interesting video thank you for producing it.

I love these videos about Russian weapon history with Max! Keep up the good work guys!

What about the 14.5 mm KPV heavy machine gun? I would love it if some actually did an in-depth analysis of that monster.

Thank you both!

Damn good video about a damn good machine gun. Thank you two for putting this out here.

Its almost like everything Kalashnikov touched is extremely reliable and long lasting

Hopefully soon we’ll see a video on the DSHK, VSS, NSV, and other interesting firearms!

Please never stop making these

Thanks, Max. That was excellent.

Excellent as always from Mr. M. Popender.

i would like him to talk about AEK 971/AK 107 with balanced system

As a 240B gunner I always looked at the PKMs weight very jealousy

I really like Max and his knowledge. It's good to know that gun guys are gun guys no matter where they are from.

Awesome resource since very little is available online about the design history of this GPMG.

When you need 200 rounds of ammo to hit one target 'laughs in russian'

13:56 Give that thing a couple of handles and Heavy would bring in another cousin for Sasha

"The developers were dragging their feet." I'm guessing that this was after Stalin died. 😂

When command finds out you have been using sniper grade ammo in your pkm but you have been hitting 9/10 of your shots.

Excellent, as always.

This is brilliant, and I really wish I had the budget for a PKM. The 86 ban SUCKS!

О, Попенкер) Давно я на его сайт не заходил, надо глянуть, что там нового.

Great program👍🏻

I remember seeing FLIR/headcam footage of an Apache gunner in Afghanistan getting hit through the window by what was thought to be a round from a PKM. IIRC the guy was pretty chilled out about it so im guessing the altitude and whatever kinda glass was between them did a nice job slowing it down.

Im only 70 seconds in and I can already tell I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this

Thanks, that was fascinating.