The Kulakov Grenade Launcher was designed by Captain Kulakov during World War II. It was based on an obrez, used blank cartridges as propellant, and could be loaded with 44.15mm grenades through a front loading gate.
This weapon’s main highlight is its 5 shot revolving cylinder and auto indexing system, allowing it to be loaded like a revolver. It also comes with a recoil pad and pistol grip to help manage recoil. When fired, expanding gases are captured in a chamber around the muzzle, which rotates the cylinder. The recoil spring then returns the barrel to its original position. The user can now cycle the action, load another blank, and fire another grenade.
But here’s the catch: the auto mechanism only rotates the cylinder — you still have to reload the rifle manually. So the practical ROF could never match a standard Mosin (10–13 rpm). In fact, it’s worse, because reloading the cylinder every 5 shots was a nightmare (39 kg just to lift the shroud). It couldn’t even reach 5 rpm, let alone the TTT requirement of 10–15. In addition, it was difficult to manufacture and complex to maintain, weighed 15 kg, and was therefore never adopted.
It fired a 44×15mm grenade, a dedicated round. The 450g projectile was lighter than usual, but that was just the steel practice version used in testing. The actual HE round would have been heavier, similar to the Dyakonov (700g).
Being a unique and interesting weapon, it should take at least 7 seconds to fully reload and should stay off the tech tree.
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