I don´t know, but some sources says the 14.5mm is nealy two times more powerfull than western 12.7mm.

It´s steel core bullets have more penetration power than .50 APDS, + - 3cm of armor at 500mm. Enough to kill most ligth vehicles.

it seems a weapon in search of a role really. awfully big and heavy yet still not throwing a slug effective against any but the lightest of armoured vehicles.

The 14.5mm will rip apart any of the older generation APC's such as the M113 or FV432, in such a role it is far superior to many 20mm rounds, especially the old German 20x83mm. It also makes a decent light AAA weapon... it really shouldnt be underestimated.

(borrowing/plagiarizing from the Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century Weapons and Warfare, vol 15, pp 1658-1659, c 1977): "The KPV (Krupnokalibernyi Pulemet Vladimirova) is one of a line of Soviet guns which were introduced into service in the early 1950s when the Soviet Army was modernizing after the Second World War. The 14.5mm (0.57-in) caliber KPV was designed by Vladimirov to fire the existing round from the PTRD and PTRS antitank rifles, and in its day it was an advanced design exhibiting several new features. It is still a very good weapon today, and certainly it is better than the US 0.5-in (12.7mm) Browning. It was originally conceived as an antiaircraft gun, and in this role it has been mounted in single, twin, and quadruple mounts. Using the 14.5mm round it can be assumed to be highly effective. However it is now being seen on APCs as the principal gun..." (bare in mind this series of encycs was last printed/copyrighted in 1977, so some of the info may be antiquated, but the series contains nowadays-hard-to-find info on scores of weapons from the late 1880s to early 1970s.) From other accounts, the 14.5mm antitank rifles were used for long-range sniping and anti-vehicle shots during the Korean War (in effect, a precursor to the modern, single shot anti-material big bore rifles.) By the above article, the KPV gun specs are: weight (unmounted) 48.9 kg (107 lbs 13 oz) calibre: 14.5 mm (0.57 in) length: 200.2 cm (78.8 in) barrel length: 134.9 cm (53.1 in) operation: recoil, assisted by muzzle booster rate of fire: 600 rds/min muzzle velocity: 1000 m/sec (3300 ft/sec) The nearest Western counterpart was the Boys antitank rifle, of 0.55in (13.97mm), although the US, late in WW2, was developing a .60in (sixty caliber, 15.2mm) heavy machine gun for aircraft use as a possible replacement for the 12.7mm Browning (was installed in Bell's XP-83 jet fighter prototype as six T17E3 MGs). It was also conceptualized in a few antiaircraft mountings (such as the T100 "Stinger" quad radar directed AA Gun Motor Carriage), and would have proven very capable against infantry and light vehicles, but lost favor with the advent of the 20mm Vulcan guns, of which the three early models were a .60in T45, a 20mm T171, and a 27mm T150. In the end, the T171 was officially adopted as the M61. Some other good data on various machine guns and light automatic cannons is available at: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/MilRel.html a very exceptional site on the expirements in machine gun caliber cartridges. Apparently, like the Russian 14.5mm and British Boys .55in, there was a US 15.2mm also originally built to an antitank cartridge specification ( but this was different from the T17 machine gun, which was based off the German MG151.) Also of interesting note, in November 1977, the US Army Research and Development Command in Dover, NJ, under the project leadership of one Curt Johnson, began designing a possible replacement for the Browning Fifty MG. Nicknamed the "Dover Devil", it was far lighter and less complex (and easier to maintain) than the Browning HMG. And with slight modifications, the gun could be converted (it was dual feed capable, from left- and right-side mechanisms) into a 20mm weapon also. Such a weapon in US (and NATO?) inventory would've given the KPV 14.5 a serious competitor (and quite possibly, another barrel could've been developed to allow the Dover Devil to fire the Russian cartridge.) The few articles I have on this program only mention of its design and testing in the late 1970s, and no mention is made as to why the weapon was found unfavorable and never selected. But such a weapon would've easily transitioned to fire the fuzed rounds of the coming 25mm M307 OCSW, which itself can be converted to fire 12.7mm ammunition (but at a lower ROF than the Browning), and it doesn't take a lot of ingenuity to create a barrel mechanism in 14.5mm also, although it is doubtful there is legitimate reason to do so.) .

doesn't seem link the link wants to work, sorry. A websearch of "T17 machine gun" will provide the same link, which seems to work off the search engine page. Also, the main table is listed as "Tony Williams' Ammunition Photo Gallery", which is listed as: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/tankammo.html (although I'm doubting it will work, either.) Also, there is a large tech reference section at: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/ (no telling it works from here, either...but they seem to function fine from the search engine page and my personal bookmarks and favorites...) ?

yes! those second two seem to work fine. And there is a TON of info on everything from ammunition to several of the guns that fire them. .

Yimmy pretty much anything you can kill with the 14.5 can be killed with a 12.7 which is barely half the weight.

The 14.5mm has a far flatter trajectory at a greater range. It cand destroy armoured vehicles protected against the 12.7mm round.

There are some articles suggesting there was a small HE round available for the KPV (a tribute to Russian engineering to design an effective fuze for a round that small): certainly this seems like it would be impractical, but consider it would be quite effective at igniting a fuel tank more readily than AP ammunition will. It's explosive power might be similar to closing your hand around a lit firecracker: it won't take your arm off, but it is still strong enough to do considerable damage. (The article in the encyc I quoted says the round weighed 60g (2.1 oz), but it does not mention the amount of explosive filler.) .