Garanin general-purpose machine guns
Produced by Garanin
The Garanin machine guns (Пулемёт Гаранина) were a series of general-purpose machine gun prototypes developed by Soviet designer Georgy Semenovich Garanin at OKB-575 in Kovrov. These guns were developed in the context of a contest, started in December 1955, for replacing the company-level RP-46 light machine gun and the battalion-level "heavy" (in the old sense of the term) machine gun SGM with a single new machine gun that could fulfill both roles using different mounts. Garanin's first prototype for this competition operated on the principle of lever-delayed blowback. This prototype was rejected in 1957 for failing to meet several of the technical requirements for accuracy and reliability. A later prototype of Garanin relied on gas operation; this one was rejected in 1960, because it was considered inferior to the front-runner designs of Nikitin and Kalashnikov. Ultimately, Kalashnikov's PK machine gun won the competition.