Eli5: Why are weapons(guns, tanks, some planes) named with numbers and letters?
In: 3
In the US military, aircraft are coded according to function. The “F” in F-14, F22, etc. stands for “fighter.” A “B,” as on the B-2, B-52, etc., stands for “bomber.” The AH-64 Apache is an “assault helicopter.”
It helps to keep track and easily communicate what’s being discussed. Take the Abrams tank, the M1 tank, for example. You have the original M1 tank, then a new variant M1A1, and then M1A2. In between where were also SEP’s, System Enhancement Packages, so if someone asked about an M1A1SEPv2 that tells you a lot about what you’re dealing with.
Tl;dr It’s a way to encode lots of information into a short, easy to remember code. A huge amount of military acronymage, jargon, and other language comes down to the need for things to be quick to remember, hard to forget, and easy to shout.
The military is obsessed with using codenames, acronyms, and designations.
Virtually everything in the military arsenal has an associated Letter/number designation.
This is in part to make specific pieces of equipment and models easy to identify, codify, requisition, and shout on a radio. IE to simplify logistics.
One theory goes that when using said designations on captured paperwork or on open radio the enemy would have a more difficult time identifying what you are talking out. But most of these designations are so common place and stamped on everything that this is basically non-sense.
These days using designations for stuff in the Army is part tradition, and part them just being pedantic.
An M-16 simply means Model-16
While with planes the designation C means Cargo, F means Fighter, A is Attack, B is bomber, but the lines are blurred these days because most planes like the F-18, F-16, and F-35 are multi-role.
My Dad once complained that he was ordered to carry several LVS’s up north on a cargo plane. LVS stood for Light Vehicle Snow… “Just call it a snowmobile!”
Words are imprecise
Letter and number designations are cold, unfeeling, and accurate
Generally things get given a common name (Sherman) but also an initial designation (M4) but variants tack things onto the end of the base designation (M4A3(76)W)
A Sherman is everything from the round M4A1 to the longgg M4A4 to the Israeli M50 and it could have a 75mm gun or a high velocity 76mm gun which take very different rounds. There are dozens of possible configurations if you need parts for a “Sherman tank” but an M4A3(76)W is a Sherman with a Ford V8, a 76mm gun, and wet ammo storage and all that info is contained within 9 characters
In the design phase the product normally goes through many versions before the production model is approved and sometimes an existing model is improved upon, this makes letter number combination easier than having a whole new name for something that might never be produced.
In short, it’s a bureaucratic means of classifying and standardizing things. They’re named that way essentially because the Department of Defense says to. It has practical applications like being able to quickly tell what the use for a certain item is, like the [Tri-Service Designation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_United_States_Tri-Service_aircraft_designation_system) used for American aircraft across all branches of the military. Using it, you can immediately tell whether an aircraft if meant as a bomber (B), a fighter (F), a cargo aircraft (C) or any other number of useful categories. The number attached usually gives you the relative order in which they were designed, however this can sometimes vary for any reason, from “we want to confuse the enemy as to how many types of planes we have” to “we thought this number was cooler”
The same holds true for for various other classification schemes, although the aircraft one is much more extensive than most others than I’m aware of. But the long and the short of it is that it’s easier and more consistent to refer to it as a standard code than some arbitrary name or description.
You mean like a Luger? Or a Garand? Or a Thompson?
But I get what you mean.
In an organization like a military having a specific name for items is important. If you what a logistic system that can provide spare parts etc you need to know that is it for.
There is often a specific destination like that for consumer produce too they are just not as commonly used. An iPhone 14 has the following numerical designation depending on the market. A2882 (International), A2649 (USA), A2881 (Canada, Japan), A2884 (China, Hong Kong), A2883 (Russia)
The common military system is either to have a number series of that type of item and increase the number by 1 for each newly adopted model. An initial M is not uncommon where M stands for Model or Mark. a M16 official destination is “Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16” Sometimes numbers are skipped, and sometimes the are just uncommon adopted variants. The M14 rifle is relatively well-known and the M15 was a Squad Automatic Weapon variant of the M14 that was adopted but quite quickly dropped because the
For airplanes, the initial letter shows what type of aircraft it is, A attack, B bomber, F fighter etc
Modification of an adopter model often gets the same initial number but added a letter after it. You can have a number after the letter if you ad more upgrade like an M16A1 and M16A2
For aircrafts, it is not uncommon for multiple models produce initially a F16A is a single seat and the F16B a two-seat variant. The upgrade was F16C/D
In the late 19th and early 20th century, rifles and pistols would be designated by the year of their introduction. So the M1903 Springfield rifle was introduced in 1903 and the M1911 pistol was introduced in 1911. Around the U.S. entry into WW2, this practice was replaced with a sequential system, which is how we get the M1 Garand rifle and the M3 tank. And contrary to some, the letter “M” doesn’t stand for anything. Instead, MIL-STD-1468A states that all equipment produced under that standard shall have a type designation of “M”.
Outside of the U.S., the letters are usually an abbreviation for either the manufacturer or for some description of the weapon. For example, the AK in AK-47 is short for *Avtomat Kalashnikova*, which literally means “Kalashnikov’s automatic [rifle]”. Likewise, the “RPG” in RPG-7 stands for *Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot* which means “handheld anti-tank grenade launcher”.
Weapons are often named with numbers and letters to denote different versions of the same weapon. For example, an M4 rifle is a variation of the M16 rifle. The numbers and letters can indicate the model, type, size, and other characteristics of the weapon.
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