As warfare evolves, the machine gun will always be needed. The technology surrounding it may change, but the basic requirement remains the same. One area where Russia has taken a noticeably different path from many Western countries is machine gun belts. Russian PK and PKM belts can be a headache for many Western users, and you can trace much of that design back to the Second World War and the Soviet SG-43. During its development, Soviet designers studied what the Finns were doing with their Maxim guns, as well as the German approach to feeding the MG34 and MG42 with metallic links. Had Soviet observers paid closer attention to developments in the United States during the war, they might have recognized that factory-loaded, in all flavors, and disintegrating belts seen with .50 linked ammunition during the war were becoming increasingly common in the West.