Machine Guns - Forgotten Weapons

Economy SIG: The MP48 at the Range

April 16, 2022 Ian McCollum 10

The SIG MP48 was the result of a series of successively cheaper and simpler iterations of the MKPS design. They kept the basic receiver geometry, but lost much of the finesse. The MP48 in particular […]

MP48: When SIG Cheaps Out

April 15, 2022 Ian McCollum 32

Following the adoption of the WF Bern MP41/44 by the Swiss military, SIG continued to develop its own submachine gun design in hopes of outside commercial and military sales. This is the MP48 pattern, which […]

FN-DA1: The BAR for NATO

April 13, 2022 Ian McCollum 28

After World War Two, FN put the BAR back into production. This was initially the FN-D version with a quick-change barrel, but with NATO’s adoption of the 7.62mm cartridge, there was a demand for the […]

SIG MKPS at the Range

April 9, 2022 Ian McCollum 30

Today we have the SIG MKPS out at the range – and WOW! I did not anticipate just how fast-firing of a submachine gun this is. Calculating from the high speed footage, it is running […]

SIG MKPS: Possibly the Most Beautiful SMG Ever Made

April 8, 2022 Ian McCollum 18

SIG began making SMGs in the 1920s with a licensed copy of the Bergmann. In 1927 the license expired, and they began working on their own designs, the first of which was introduced as the […]

FN MAG: Best of the Western GPMGs

April 6, 2022 Ian McCollum 73

The FN MAG (Mitrailleuse d’Appui Général – General Purpose Machine Gun) was designed by Ernest Vervier, who took over from Dieudonné Saive as FN’s lead military arms designer in 1954. The Swedish government approached FN […]

m/26 Suomi: Aimo Lahti’s First Production Design

March 23, 2022 Ian McCollum 8

Aimo Lahti was the premier firearms designer, and the m/26 was his first significant design. Lahti was a Civil Guard armorer, and upon seeing the Lindelof copy of the Bergmann SMG in 1921 he thought […]

Ukrainian DShK as Infantry Support Weapon

March 18, 2022 Ian McCollum 20

The initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 stagnated into trench warfare after a few months, and Ukrainian forces found themselves often in entrenched positions 500m or more from Russian opposition. At that range, their […]

Ukrainian Adaptation of PKTs to Infantry Use

March 15, 2022 Ian McCollum 30

I have had several people send me this video, showing a Ukrainian shop converting PKT machine guns to an infantry configuration. The PK machine gun is used in a lot of Russian armored vehicles, but […]

Ian’s Customs: Lage Max11A1/15 Light Machine Gun

March 12, 2022 Ian McCollum 11

I bought an M11A1 machine pistol several years ago, when I first heard about the Lage Max11/15 project (I chose the M11A1 because I wanted the shortest registered receiver possible). Well, the M11A1 version of […]