HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Knight's Armament Company 6×35mm PDW is an experimental
personal defense weapon Personal defense weapons (PDWs) are a class of compact, magazine-fed automatic firearms that are typically submachine guns designed to fire rifle-like cartridges. Most PDWs fire a small-caliber (generally less than in bullet diameter), high-velo ...
designed by
Knight's Armament Company Knight's Armament Company (KAC) is an American firearms and firearms parts manufacturer, known for producing the Rail Interface System (RIS) and the Rail Adapter System (RAS) grips for firearms use. The company produces a variety of firearms, ...
(KAC), firing a 6mm cartridge optimized for short barrel weapons.


History

The weapon was formally introduced at the 2006
NDIA Ndia or NDIA may refer to: *Ndia Constituency, Kirinyaga District, Central Province, Kenya *Alternative name for the Southern Kirinyaga dialect of the Kikuyu language *National Defense Industrial Association, an American trade association *Nationa ...
Small Arms Symposium in
Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...
,
New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
. Some writers were shown samples at the earlier 2006
SHOT Show The SHOT Show, which is an acronym for "Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show", is an American annual trade fair, trade show for the shooting sports, hunting, outdoor recreation, and firearm manufacturing industry (economics), industries. The ...
.


Design

The KAC's lower receiver, holding the
magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
and
trigger Trigger may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional entities * Trigger (''Only Fools and Horses''), in the TV sitcom * Trigger Argee, in science fiction short stories by James H. Schmitz * Devil Trigger, a transformation ability of ...
assembly, is essentially a shortened
M16 rifle The M16 (officially Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16) is a family of assault rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States Armed Forces, United States military. The original M16 was a 5.56×45mm NATO, 5.56×45mm automatic ...
lower receiver, which makes the basic operating controls familiar to many potential users. However, the cartridge, upper receiver, and operating mechanism are all new designs by KAC.KAC's NEW PERSONAL DEFENSE WEAPON
, Gary Paul Johnston, November 7, 2006, ''Soldier of Fortune'' magazine website, accessed January 16, 2007.
The KAC PDW uses a completely side-folding
stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...
, unlike the M16 and M4 designs which have their main operating spring in a tube in the stock, and therefore can only partially telescope, and not fold sideways at all, unless specialized hardware is installed. 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.Defense Review article on KAC PDW and competitors
, accessed December 21, 2006.


Ammunition

The KAC PDW fires proprietary 6×35 mm cartridge, which is over a centimeter shorter than the 5.56×45mm NATO round. The 6mm bullet is slightly wider, and the standard 6×35mm bullet slightly heavier, than the standard 5.56mm bullet ( versus ). Fired from a 10-inch (250 mm) barrel, KAC claims that the 6×35mm cartridge reaches a muzzle velocity of , slightly faster than the muzzle velocity of a 5.56 mm cartridge fired from a similarly short barrel. The larger diameter, shorter 6 mm cartridge is optimized for these shorter barrel lengths, and would perform less efficiently from rifle-length barrels. The round's muzzle energy is versus for a 5.56 mm bullet, again from the same 10" standard barrel. A variant chambered in .300 AAC Blackout is also available.


References


External links

* {{Personal defense weapons Personal defense weapons .300 BLK firearms ArmaLite AR-10 derivatives AR-15 style rifles category:Rifles of the United States Trial and research firearms of the United States