One truly wierd small arm...
 

Oddly enough, I stumbled into this after I had played a bit of Duke Nukem (hail to the King, Baby! :p ) I had thought "I wonder if anyone would be crazy enough to actually build a three-barrelled assault rifle/machine gun." And as it turns out thanks to a mention from a poster on IMFDB.org, there in fact was.

Gentlemen, I present to you, the Soviet Prizor 3b and it's variant, the Soviet TKB-0591...

I'll have to look up some more info on these, but these were apparently developed around 1966 or so. The idea was to develop an assault rifle/machine gun that had a better hit-to-kill probability, by firing three rounds at a time with each pull of the trigger, or so I'm told. Yes, that's not a gimmick...it's three barrels, with three separate chambers all built into one platform with a 60 round magazine. :eek:

As far as is known, it was only experimental. Still, I can't imagine what the weight must've been, or how much of a pain in the ass maintenance would be if you had three separate barrels and chambers to clean.

Oh and apologies if the images are too large, hope it's not a problem.

I meant to add that the cartridge ejection is a bit weird too. Apparently, the cartridges eject BEHIND the magazine and downward, so to make it more ambidextrous. I believe it was designed around the 7.62x39 cartridge, but could be wrong.

Still looks like a hell of a handful though.

I'd love to see the inside of that magazine. It looks about as long as the Hungarian 20-rounders... triple-stack?

- C.

That's my guess. The extraction and loading system has to be complicated as hell though, from what's been described. It's claimed some research and/or lessons learned from this experiment went into the creation/production of the AN-94 assault rifle.

Beauty, eh? Though I'd want it mounted on a tripod if I were going to fire it on full auto, even in bursts...

The bottom picture, for some reason, made me think Aliens .

This was the Soviet answer to the US Army's Project Salvo from the 1950s/1960s. You might get some more info by looking for Pribor with the term 'meroka' included in the search (meroka is a German term - MeRoKa from Mehrrohrkanone, meaning multi-barrelled gun).
It might also help to look for it with reference to the Nordenfelt Gun.

There's been lots of speculation about the recoil. Despite the weapons overall weight, the recoil from 3 barrels firing at the same time cannot possibly increase your chance to hit and the entire purpose of the weapon was to increase the hit chance!

Here's one thread with a few more images.
http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/...ult-rifle.html

P.S. I believe the second model of the Pribor had forward ejection of the cases, I only remembered that after having another look at the photos!

Paul, if you like I'll see what stats I can dredge up on this oddity for you, if you wish. ;)

And I agree, I think I'd want this sucker mounted on a tripod, or be firing it from a prone position on a bipod before firing anything other than 3 round bursts.

Though since this is designed to fire 3 rounds simultaneously, would that really be considered a "burst" or "single shot"? :confused:

Recoil either way must have truly been a bitch for staying on target though.

I'm wondering if the firing of each barrel is staggered in an attempt to reduce the sudden THUMP of recoil? Make it a little more like a fire hose than jack hammer.... :confused:

Thanks for the link and info. And for some reason the bullpup action makes me think of the OTS-14 Groza, interesting looking firearm...butt ugly as hell though.

If it's ugly and it works, it's not ugly... ;)

Oh, I agree. It looks like it's another copy of the Kalashnikov action though when you look at it , down to the big crude selector/safety. Which means it probably won't work well for lefties, that plus it's a pretty odd position for the selector lever, not to mention the ergonomic balance looks like it would be a bit off unless you had the grenade launcher installed.

Others you might want to look for along this line are the SerLea Ace (designed by a Lebanese immigrant for CQB, experimented with by the US Army and LAPD, and used in a B-movie called Sudden Impact), the the ITM Models 1-4. These were essentially double submachineguns, but none were successful on the market. I have those statted on my site, and what I got for the full auto recoil was horrendous. And for some reason, the designers of these weapons decided not only to make them double submachineguns, but also give them shorty barrels, no flash suppressors or muzzle brakes, and make them light in weight. I mean, what were the designers expecting to happen when they opened them up on full auto? They would be good for spraying a room, but I'd think that they'd be really inaccurate in even a long hallway.

And who wouldn't? For that matter just do away with the rifle part and make it a grenade launcher. Everyone likes a big bang right? :p

Only thing that bugs me about the GP-25 and GP-30 grenade launchers...they're both loaded from the muzzle end, right? Once inserted, a lever and trigger is automatically cocked when the grenade is in place. So....how do you remove the grenade if for any reason firefight ends, you want to use a different grenade, etc.? Or are you pretty much stuck with that grenade loaded until it's fired??

If so, reminds me of the early Russian copies of the LAW, the RPG-18, where apparently once the launcher was extended, the rocket was live and could not be re-collapsed nor safed. Talk about looking after the safety of your privates...:eek:

I've heard mention there's a catch you operate to release the loaded round and decock the weapon. The question is obviously one the designers answered early on.

Here's some images of the weapons you mentioned. As far as the Searlea Ace is concerned...it doesn't look like a bad idea, though I wonder with the magazine setup, you'd have to load each mag well seperately or could they have developed it so that just one large magazine could be fitted? Either way you'd be either faced with having to load two magazines at a time or having to carry some very big magazines on your vest or other LBE.

As for the ITM Models...yeah, I see what you mean. Although the Model 3 seems to have some sort of rudimentary brake on both barrels, or no? Again, it looks interesting, but I just wonder besides the issues you already raised, wouldn't you have to carry around even more ammunition since you are in fact carrying not one weapon but two with these combination guns?

Aaaaaand....I felt I just needed to add this. Apparently someone at Lage manufacturing, which does modifications of existing M11 and Mac 10 submachine guns into almost entirely different looking weapons altogether, actually went and designed a "real life" Aliens M41 Pulse rifle.

No lie, GI!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am76xV8Aubk

Sadly, it doesn't fire 10mm caseless ammunition nor 30mm grenades... what it DOES do is fire 9mm Parabellum ammunition utilizing a very heavily modified Lage Max-11 submachine gun alongside firing 12 gauge shells utilizing an undermounted Remington 870 AOW shotgun. According to the guy who made this, it does indeed have an electronic red dot sight and a functioning round counter that lights up and tracks the number of rounds left when you insert a 50 round magazine into the weapon. Unfortunately, it appears this was a one-off and wont' be manufactured in any quantities unless someone else picks it up. :(