Eli5: Why are weapons(guns, tanks, some planes) named with numbers and letters?
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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
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