You missed the point.
An unopened wooden crate containing mortar shells and an unopened wooden crate containing artillery shells would look very similar. Sure, the ammo looks completely different once you've opened up the container and see what's inside -- but by then it's too late, the ammo has been delivered to the combat zone.
The point was that by making different ammo in differing diameters, the Soviet army simplified its logistics and supply chain.
This is not BS, this came from a Department of Defense document I obtained for a research paper some years ago. I read something similar in a Soldier of Fortune article some while back.
Anyway, it was just an analogy that I thought illustrated my point about the socket change. It's hardly even worth my time typing in a response -- but it's 4 p.m. where I am and I'm just killing time until I can leave for the day.
Sorry Bs is bs no matter the source, how do you simplify logistics by adding more calibers?. Maybe this was too complicated for the Ruskis but they could have simply MARKED the unopened crates. This makes about as much sense as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
Not that this has that much to do with this forums topic, but what the heck.
Homeboy, while you make excellent points about the differences between the munitions and the simplification of logistics, Brainysmurf is correct.
First you must be aware that the typical US politicians, soldiers or citizens perspective of efficiency and problem solving is drastically different from that of many other nations.
Secondly, regardless of all the politicians running around trying to "hype" disharmony, segregation and lack of unity in the US it’s nowhere near the level they promote. It’s just marketing to use these issues as their own personal campaign platform for elections. The truth is that the United States, relative to the majority of other countries (last time I looked, there were 227 of them) is phenomenally unified. 1 language, in terms of literacy, based on which the US is the 9th most literate country on the planet. 1 system of government for all citizens, democracy (more or less) and 1 legal system (the military and the Uniform Code of Military Justice not withstanding) Whats this got to do with anything? Makes training/learning a whole lot easier, cheaper, and more effective. It also tends to unify and narrow point of view.
Thirdly, the United States is the most unique military power that has ever held power in the history of human kind. The training given, even to the lowest ranking of our troops, tends to exceed by magnitudes that of any other country on the planet. We are the only signatory of the Geneva Convention that actually makes any kind of attempt to adhere to them (even if we fail) and most importantly, the US is the only country that considers each and every member of its armed forces to be "irreplaceable" i.e, no cannon fodder.
Forth, complicating something in one aspect, may simplify it in another. It’s just a matter of the predominant perspective. The US is huge on multi mission - one gun kills all. It wasn’t always that way, and a lot of other countries still don’t subscribe to that concept. In terms of production and cost efficiency, the USSR’s methods were mind boggling to the US, but from the perspective of simple stock organization and segregation, it does make sense
Bearing those things in mind, you must consider that the majority of the USSR’s armed forces were conscripts. 18 years old, of insignificant formalized education, and as Brainy pointed out, from a multitude of countries. We are so used to hearing people whine about our education system and put it down that we forget just how good it really is. Yes, there are a few countries better than the US in terms of education, but not many, and certainly not the majority of the 200+ countries on the planet
And never in its history did the USSR come even remotely close to euqllying our education system. In short, the USSR had a serious literacy problem. Aside from the problem of fundamental illiteracy, (simply not being able to read) the problem of functional illiteracy (being able to read, but in this case, not to read the predominant language) was significant. Marking crates was simply not good enough since there was a significant chance that the individuals filling, delivering or opening the crates, let alone those feeding the ammo to the equipment could not read the crates even if they were marked. Combine this with no intellectual standards in its conscription and an extremely rudimentary basic training. The sovs did not waste time teaching the "3 Rs" to those it considered cannon fodder, nor did it waste money printing ammunition specifications in 22 different languages. The simple solution for them was, the circle goes in the round hole, the square in the four sided hole, and neither will fit in the other. This way the two cant be mixed up.
The amount of tactical and strategic information that came out of the USSR after its collapse was staggering. Staggering in its exposure of just how far off the mark both the USSR's and the US's intelligence analysis’ were. Again, it has nothing to do with the topic but 2 of my favorite cold war "revelations" were:
1 The Sovs had a huge fear of land warfare in the North Eastern United States: to wit, they were basically scarred shitless of the prospect of invading the US. Why? "Snipers" The Largest modern mechanized ground military on the planet was not afraid of the US's technologically superior equipment, it was afraid of our citizens. Specifically, the millions of American hunters living in the North East (NY, Penn, R.I, N.H, etc) Each one armed with high powered, accurate, long range (relative to the sovs aks) rifle, on their own turf, experienced in sneaking around stealthily stalking game AND, most likely, pissed off in a patriotic sort of manner. Put yourself in the USSR's place. Who do you think would have won, a bunch of under trained, uneducated 18 year old conscripts who don’t believe in what their fighting for and hate their leaders or the millions of "snipers" defending their homes. Sadly, the US never knew about this until after the fact because our perception was different.
2 The fallacy of US air superiority in the European theatre. The US's air superiority relied (and still does) overwhelmingly on AWACs for theatre coordination and control, and the USSR knew it. What we (the US) didnt know, (or plan on) was the Sovs plan to counter the AWACS. We estimated 4-5 hostiles (at most) per attempt to down our AWACS. No problem for the US, easily handled by our F15s. The reality was the Sovs planned not for 4-5 attackers, but for entire squadrons of fighters per AWACs. An AWACS with a CAP of 2 F15s, each with 4 medium and 4 short range missiles would have been hopelessly out numbered by 14-20 (sqdn size depended on the location, branch of svc, acft type etc) MIG 29s each carrying 10 air to air missiles. Hell, even if a single Sov AAM never touched an Eagle the probability of a mid air collision with that much metal in one section of sky grunted the soviets success.
These are 2 examples of how the US mis-read the Sovs, because we tried to view their actions based on our perspective (the best example is LT Viktor Belenko, the MIG25 pilot who defected in the 70s)
So, while it may seem wacked based on how the US does things, for the USSR, using multiple calibers made great sense.
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