Knight's Armament Company PDW

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Knight's Armament Company Personal Defense Weapon design

The Knight's Armament Company 6 x 35mm PDW is an experimental personal defense weapon designed by KAC, firing a new 6mm cartridge optimized for short barrel weapons.

As with all personal defense weapons, the KAC PDW is intended to be compact and lightweight (similarly to submachineguns), but have a longer useful range (out to the low end of combat rifle ranges, 2-300 meters). A PDW would be issued primarily to troops who are not offensive combat infantry, but who might need a highly capable defensive weapon if they were attacked, such as truck drivers, artillery troops, tank crews, aircraft crews, and other support troops. The KAC PDW is 10 inches (25 cm) shorter (19.5" vs 29.8" with stocks folded) and 1 or more lb (450 g) lighter (4.5 lb vs 5.5 lb) than the current "light" US Army and Marines weapon, the M4 carbine.

1 Description
2 History
3 Competitors
4 External links
5 References
6 See also

[edit] Description

The KAC PDW combines new and off the shelf components in its design. The lower receiver, holding the magazine and trigger assembly, is essentially a shortened M-16 rifle lower receiver,^[1] which makes the basic operating controls familiar to many potential users. The cartridge, upper receiver, and operating mechanism are all new designs by KAC.

KAC PDW with stock folded

The KAC PDW uses a completely side-folding stock, unlike the M-16 designs which have their main operating spring in a tube in the stock, and therefore can only partially collapse (and not fold sideways at all).

The barrel has been lightened with a new dimpling process.

[edit] Cartridge

The KAC PDW fires a 6x35mm cartridge, a full centimeter shorter than the western military standard 5.56x45mm round. The 6mm cartridge has a slightly wider bullet, and the standard 6x35mm bullet is slightly heavier than the standard 5.56mm bullet (65 grains versus 62 grains). ^[2]

Fired from a 10 inch (25 cm) barrel, KAC claims that the 6x35mm cartridge reaches a muzzle velocity of 2,425 feet per second (740 m/s), slightly faster than the muzzle velocity of a 5.56mm cartridge fired from a similarly short barrel. The larger diameter, shorter 6mm cartridge is optimized for these shorter barrel lengths, and would perform less efficiently from rifle-length barrels. 6x35mm muzzle energy is 831 ft-lbs versus 792 ft-lbs for a 5.56mm bullet, again from the same 10" standard barrel.

There is a discrepancy between the velocity claimed by Knights' for 5.56 mm 62 grain SS109 NATO ammunition fired from a 10 inch Colt Commando barrel (2,400 ft/sec, 792 ft-lb energy) and other M-16 manufacturers' stated muzzle velocities (2,627 ft/sec, 950 ft-lb) (see Colt Commando#Criticisms). In any case the energies and velocities are roughly comparable.

[edit] Operating mechanism

According to a weapon review article ^[3], the KAC PDW has two gas pistons tapping hot gas from the barrel to operate its mechanism, located on the top left and right sides of the bolt carrier. The single mainspring is located on top, between the two gas pistons. The bolt itself is said to be similar to a Kalashnikov AK-47 type rotating bolt.

[edit] Specifications

The KAC PDW has the following characteristics: ^[4]

Caliber: 6 x 35 mm
Weight empty: 4.5 lbs.
Magazine capacity: 30-rounds (20-rd available)
Length overall: 28”
Length folded: 19.5”
Barrel lengths: 10” & 8”
Muzzle velocity 2,425 fps (10”)

[edit] History

The new weapon was formally introduced at the 2006 NDIA Small Arms Symposium in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some writers were shown samples at the earlier 2006 SHOT show. The weapon is currently not in production, but is available for prototype testing.