Machine guns in general and heavy machine guns in particular have a tendency to be used for prolonged periods of time with no real modernization. The examples are countless - FN MAG, PKM, DShK and especially Browning .50cal. And the reason is simple - they do the job. Yet, Soviet small arms constructors saw a potential "in the market" and acted on it. This article is part of a bigger list of all weapons used by the Soviet Army during the Afghan campaign. And if you want to know more about this machine gun and see some beautiful picture, please check out one of our books which hosts it - Soviet Weapons of the Afghan War.
The development of NSV Utes
The heavy machine gun which was employed by the Soviet Army is well known to the public - it is the famous DShKM. It is a great weapon - reliable, durable and precise. There is just one major problem associated with it - it is heavy as hell. Together with the tripod it weight 80kg, which rules out the possibly to be carried by hand, even by a crew. Many militaries in the world never really cared about the fact - heavy machine guns were always carried by motor transport. But Soviet engineers actually had this desire to make everything as light as possible - the financial politics of the country called for it.
The NSV Utes was developed by Nikitin, Sokolov and Volkov - an experienced team that has participated in the development of the general purpose machine gun back in 50s, but lost to Kalashnikov's team and their PKM. But the concepts and mechanical ideas were not lost, instead used during the design of NSV Utes.
And there were plenty of futuristic implementations, that made the machine gun as good as it is. In fact, there were so many that a new factory had to be built to accommodate the production. The plant was made in Kazakh SSR, named "Metallist" - the production at the Degtyarev plant in Kovrov was overloaded.
A large number of engineers and workers from Tula, Kovrov, Izhevsk, Samara, Vyatskiye Polyany were attracted as labor. During the production of the NSV Utes, completely new and original technologies of various Soviet research institutes were used, some of which were not used anywhere else in the production of small arms. Thus, electrochemical processing was used to obtain the rifling of the barrel bore, a vacuum tempering system was used for thermal tempering, in which hydrogen was removed from the chrome coating, the so-called "thick" (up to 2 mm) chromium plating to increase the survivability of the barrel was achieved using jet chromium plating technology.
NSV Utes in Afghan
The first conflict where NSV Utes was employed was the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989). And it was just a perfect tool for the job - light and portable, the Soviet Infantry which found itself being dismounted for the first time in the past 30 years could rely on this powerful weapon. Alongside with the AGS-17, this new machine gun was usually carried by "weapons" platoon within an infantry or airborne company. The tremendous firepower and long range allowed Soviet troops to win numerous firefights, in which they would otherwise be outreached by DShKs, which were often used by the Mujahideens.
The new weapon was universally loved by all those who actually had to put boots on the ground - from line infantry to Airborne Reconnaissance and Spetsnaz. The machine gun is equipped with 3 to 6 magnification SPP scope, which allows to engage targets that are way beyond the 1km mark.
Widespread of the NSV Utes machinegun after the collapse of the USSR
While NSV Utes is a great infantry weapon, hands down - the best one for the role out of all available now, it is rather controversial for the use in a mounted role, mainly on tanks. DShK is, probably, better fitted for the role - being a cast and milled weapon it is probably more durable. On the other hand, NSV Utes is a more modern weapon in turns of production cycle. Anyhow, it is widespread around the world mainly thanks to tanks that are associated with it - T-72. This was a tank that Soviet Union was happily exporting to its allies and other countries, usually even giving out licenses and production technology to closes friends. The map of the countries that have NSV Utes in their arsenals closely correlated with the ComBlock at the end of the Cold War.
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