Modern warfare involves the infiltration of contemporary technological solutions. One such innovation is the unique development by the Ukrainian company «Kharkiv Factory of Personal Protective Equipment», specifically an ammo logistics system for machine guns PK/PKM.
The metal belt for the PK, PKM, and SG serves as the basis for equipping machine guns, but it is not manufactured either in Ukraine or in the overwhelming majority of the 53 countries that have machine guns in their arsenals. In addition to the shortage caused by the lack of production and constant battlefield losses, the metal belt has several significant disadvantages, including the need to remove it from the battlefield, manual loading of rounds, heavy weight, masking noise, corrosion, and so on.
Experts from the Kharkiv Factory of Personal Protective Equipment have found solutions to all these issues by developing a unique polymer disintegrating links for machine gun ammo belt, which significantly improves the mobility and effectiveness of machine gunners on the battlefield. This fact has been proven both through field testing and in actual combat.
The polymer machine gun belt consists of a series of links, each of which has three rings connected by a crossbar. The links are hinged and connected by cartridges inserted into the aligned rings. This belt is three times lighter than the metal analogues, has low cost and high production speed, minimal noise during transportation, no corrosion, and prevents snags during operations. A key difference of this system is that the belts could be supplied to the combat zone already loaded, so soldiers do not need to spend time on this task.
The development and testing process of the polymer belt took much time, as we aimed to ensure maximum convenience, reliability, and efficiency in our product. We are in constant communication with Ukrainian defenders participating in combat operations on various parts of the frontline, and we receive feedback from them. Over the course of the war, the polymer belt produced by the Kharkiv Factory of Personal Protective Equipment has been used by the soldiers of Airborne Assault Forces, 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade, 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade, 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, and other units. Soldiers have praised the ergonomics, ease of transport and versatility of the polymer machine gun belt.
The enemy did not ignore our product. In 2022, an article was published on the website of the well-known Russian magazine «Kalashnikov», where the author, a weapons expert and editor-in-chief of the publication, Mikhail Degtyaryov, accused us of «lack of professional knowledge and ignoring historical experience», while also emphasizing that replacing the usual metal belt with a much lighter and cheaper polymer one was impossible due to several critical shortcomings.
However, two years later, several Russian companies introduced their «new products» – analogs of our development, one of which even made it to the cover of the aforementioned expert magazine.
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