I've noticed something recently about the difference between east and west (by east I mean primarily the old soviet bloc): the ammo philosiphies are exactly the opposite of the weapon philosiphies... and yet at the same time, somehow not.
by way of explanation, I present you with everyone's favorite ammo to bash: silver wolf, bear, and :
icks up box:: "sporting rifle ammunition". all three are russian surplus ammo. none is made with the care and precision of american-made ammo... or is it?
I've never deeply researched this, I'm not an economist, but I'd be willing to bet that labor- not the parts, but the labor involved in manufacturing the ammo of both countries- is roughly of an equal cost. you have to remember: the russians use steel (in my experience, harder to work with than brass) and add small rings of plastic where the bullets and primers enter the shell casing itself, and the casing is even coated in a water-proofing resin. this is not a lack of attention to quality: exactly the opposite, this is EXCELLENT attention to quality intended to compensate for poorly motivated conscript workers who were forced by the state to put the ammo together. the bullets are poorly entered and are slightly loose, but other than this, I can't find any problem with them. this ties in perfectly to the eastern philosiphy of guns: the prefer reliability to everything else. if a gun won't fire, what good is it? so they make the barrels to a slightly looser tolerance so that a bit of rust won't jam the bullet halfway down the barrel, or so a poorly-made or partially-melted bullet won't get caught. the guns are acceptably accurate to them even so, and so they don't bother to make the tolerances any higher. why should they? they have their tools, and their tools are arguably the most reliable in the world.
the western, and in particular the american philosiphy is different: reliability is all well and good, but we want functionality: we like our toys, we like to make them better, to customize them. so we get our guns working *MOST* of the time, and then we start adding new bits: scopes, slings, swivel mounts, bipods, handgrips, grenade launchers, flash hiders, extended magazines, we change the triggers- until we're happy with our 'toy'. we mill everything as tightly as possible so that nothing rattles, nothing comes loose, nothing can move at all, under the guise that stiffness is reliability and tightness decreases malfunction (whether this is true or not isn't the issue at hand).
the problem comes when east and west trade ammo: 7.62x39 brass-case 128 GR american-made ammo has a nasty habit of losing primers and the shells mis-shape themselves in the chamber, leading the russians to think our technology is flawed. on the other hand russian ammo rattles a bit more and tumbles too soon, making it useless for our anal-retentive standards for accuaracy, and theres other problems also: the enamel coating on the shells gums up our chambers, the carbon is actually caustic in some ammo loads, their inferior 'dirty' powder is harder to clean off of a gun.
this being said, I think the key to this problem (the problem of east-west standardization) lies somewhere in the middle. I think a steel-cased ammo is a GREAT idea. steel ammo, and steel bullets, are MUCH lighter than brass and lead. on the other hand, the treatments to make using steel wortwhile cause problems. does anyone have any ideas/experience in this? I'm not suggesting a new cartridge or anything, just some way that we can make the ideals of the ideal cartridge meet.
thanks.
