Ukraine

I haven't paid much attention to where fixed automatic weapons were mounted in the past, but looking at the M2 Browning, it looks like it's mounted with the gun directly in line with the pivot point.

Here's a British 20 mm Oerlikon from WW2. Same thing: the gun is mounted directly over the axis on which the gun pivots.

It kinda seems to me like even if you could manage to handle the weapon's recoil, you probably wouldn't want to have it mounted off-center like that Russian weapon is, since it'd pull to the side when you fire it, mess with your accuracy. I can't really think of any advantage to mounting it the way they have it.

Does kinda make me wonder how common that is.

EDIT: It sounds like this is nonstandard:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DatS7TAK-GO/

Trending: Russian mobile air defense team training with a YakB-12.7 machine gun ended in chaos when the gunner almost k!lled his own instructor.

The reason is surprisingly simple. Someone thought it was a good idea to mount the YakB-12.7 - a machine gun producing roughly 1,400 kgf (about 1.4 tonnes) of recoil force - on a rotating turret where the barrel’s axis is offset from the turret’s axis of rotation.

The YakB-12.7 is the primary weapon of the USPU-24 used on the Mi-24 attack helicopter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YakB-12.7_machine_gun

EDIT2: Or, rather, maybe it is standard in 2026 Russian air defense, but it's not how the weapon was originally intended to be used, is being repurposed.

EDIT3: This seems to show the same weapon mounted on a similar platform, but the position of the ammo box is reversed (on the right side rather than the left, as the operator is facing) and (as you can see at about 23 seconds) the gun is centered on the axis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyjNMKyPO2c