History
The Soviet Army began looking for a new heavy machine gun to replace its older SGM and RPD machine guns in the early 1950s. The Soviet Army liked the idea behind the German MG-42; a versatile weapon used on a variety of mounts to perform many different roles. Two Soviet weapon designers were asked to design one weapon each utilizing the same principle.
Testing approved Mikhail Kalashnikov's solution; it was found to be more reliable and cheaper to manufacture than the design of Grigory Nikitin and Yuri Sokolov. Kalashnikov's machine gun became the new standard machine gun, and was named PK.
Nikitin's and Sokolov's design was however not forgotten. It was developed into the heavy NSV machine gun about 10 years later and selected in 1969 as the successor to the DShK/DShKM machine gun. It was accepted in service by the Soviet Army in 1971. The machine gun was also license-manufactured in Bulgaria, India, Yugoslavia and Poland. The Yugoslavian version of the NSVT is called the M87.
Production of the NSV has ended in Russia, and it is currently being replaced by the Kord heavy machine gun. The Russian Army needed a more accurate heavy machine gun, and it has also been increasingly difficult to get hold of spare parts. NSV production was located in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan and was disrupted by the end of the Soviet Union.
Read more about this topic: NSV Machine Gun
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)