| Overview | Wildlands |
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The Knight's Armament Company PDW is an experimental personal defense weapon designed by Knight's Armament Company (KAC), firing a new 6mm cartridge optimized for short barrel weapons.
As with all personal defense weapons, the KAC PDW is intended to be compact and lightweight (similar to submachine guns), but have a longer useful range (out to the low end of combat rifle ranges, 250–300 m).
The KAC PDW combines new and off the shelf components in its design. The lower receiver, holding the magazine and trigger assembly, is essentially a shortened M16 rifle lower receiver, which makes the basic operating controls familiar to many potential users.
The cartridge, upper receiver, and operating mechanism are all new designs by KAC.
The KAC PDW uses a completely side-folding stock, 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.
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.
The KAC PDW fires a 6×35 mm cartridge, a full centimeter shorter than the western military standard 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.
