The PK machine gun is a Soviet-made machine gun that was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1961. The PK has been used by front-line infantry and as a mounted weapon by the Russian Army since the time of the Soviet Army in the 1960s, and it has been exported to Eastern Bloc and Third World countries extensively. With over 1,000,000 built, the PK is one of the most popular machine guns.