During the early days of the Cold War...

During the early days of the Cold War, why did it take the Western Powers some two decades or so to field an Assault Rifle? From the 50s to the late 60s it was all Battle Rifles while Soviets and their buttbudds had AKs.

Did they fear the intermediate cartridge warrior?

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Muh kewl snipers, muh marksmanship

>Soviet uniforms are stylish, practical and distinctive
>American uniforms are the same drab green camo shit over and over

On that basis alone I posit that the USSR should've won the cold war.

Because for some reason it took non-Russian retards almost 15 years to discover 'hey, maybe the STG 44 was on to something'

Practicality > style

t. virgin with no fashion sense

Yeah those Veeky Forums as fuck Germans sure showed the world.

I'm no fan of nazi Germany, but their uniforms were pretty sexy. Still think I prefer the soviet ones, at least for generals, the massive amounts of medals really add to the visual quality.

Soviet Uniforms in WW2 were hardly uniform

Thw British advocated for the introduction of .280 British, a large intermediate round which the British EM-2 and Belgian FAL rifles would originally have been chambered in. These would've been the first NATO assault rifles if the Americans didn't advocate for their own battle rifle round, 7.62x51mm, which they believed had better stopping power and was the minimum size for a rifle.
Winston Churchill decided to drop the intermediate round to ensure NATO would have a standardised round, rather than the British, Belgians and any countries that might adopt their rifles be firing completely different ammunition in the event and f WW3.
TLDR: It's the USA's fault.

Pic of EM-2 in British use. Dates to 1951 or earlier.

German uniforms were practical

Fashion doesn't matter in war
A mix of both is nice though

this

Because americans insisted on "muh full power cartridge". End of story.

its rustic, very nice design.

.280 is about as intermidiate as 6.5 jap and carcano.

It's more similar to 7.92x33mm Kurz.

>Fashion doesn't matter in war

Perhaps for the barbarians, but refined gentlemanly warriors enjoy fashion.

Not really. .280 British is only slightly smaller than 7.62 NATO. Adopting .280 would have been a huge mistake.

It really wouldn't have been, it was proven to be much more controlled in fully automatic in both platforms it would have been adapted in. It would just be a particularly large intermediate round.

Different doctrines. The Soviets fielded units with lots of sub-machine-guns to very high effect in WWII, especially in urban environments. They had lots of conscripts that could be fielded with low training, the AK wasn't supposed to be a battle rifle, it was supposed to replace the smg's, the cannon fodder infantry was ment to have as much fire power as possible in short ranges

Holy shit this is the ugliest rifle I have ever seen. I don't know much about guns, but I can immediately tell you only a beady eyed anglo could make a gun as ugly as this.

This. Americans wanted battle rifles because of American autism about marksmanship and stopping power, so they forced NATO into adopting 7.62x51. Then a few years later they changed their minds and decided to go with the AR15 and adopt 5.56.

basically it's the US wanting to stick with a "big rifle" caliber, and the British+BeNeLux being too bogged down with rebuilding their countries post-ww2 to do much in protest.

It's a shame, .280 British would've been a pretty cool thing to see adopted, even if only by European armies in an auxillery function. (like the M1-Carbine or M3-Greese-Gun were in US service).

More annoying was that WW1 basically showed the need for an assault rifle, there were multiple proto-assault-rifles in Use by the allies even. (Ribeyrolles 1918, Fedorov Automat, 1907 Winchester)

what should've been done is .280 cartridge+powder necked up to .308. possibly using the same bullet (just with a lighter charge/lower-velocity/different casing), and also the same barrels.

(though someone will argue that having a slightly thinner bullet would make more sense since you could just re-drill the barrels (and get a more appropriate turn-rate for .308Win))

Blame Springfield Armory and Big Army faggotry.

Same people that thought the Winchester repeaters were shitty compared to muzzle-loaders or single shot rifles because muh marksmanship.

>thought the Winchester repeaters were shitty compared to muzzle-loaders or single shot rifles
To be fair, they kind of weird. The Henry rifle uses a seriously under powered round and had some pretty bad reliability problems that resulted from the open magazine and issues with the firing pins. The 1866 Winchesters fixed some of those issues, but still used the shitty Henry round, and the 1873 was much better but was still using a pistol round. The Army essentially had to make a choice between firepower and stopping power. Some of their reasoning was stupid as fuck, but it's understandable to with something you know will stop an enemy, especially one that might be attacking on horseback.

The .280 simply wasn't small enough to serve as a proper round for an assault rifle. Yet at the same time, it was too weak to serve as a round for sniper rifles and machine guns. Jack of all trades. Master of none.

Because a lot of the land combat doctrines of most of Western Europe were centered around smashing everything with artillery whenever possible.

That sort of fighting doesn't lend itself towards very close quarters combat, and thus they focused on things that would be effective at the sorts of ranges they preferred to engage in.

like a mongol horde

Late infantry German camo was practical and cool and the same tiem

classic continental shitpost

soviets rifleman were basically trained to just point and hoze down a magazine at the enemy as it was cheap and simple. NATO preferred having accurate infantry

No, it was mostly "going to waste ammo and can't hit at 400 yards" which was bullshit even today with the .30caliber fags. Plus a pistol caliber is still enough for

Which worked fine. It's why the PPSH-41/43s were so effective over Mosin Nagants in literally every role except sniping.

Going back to WW1, the Artillery Luger had a drum magazine of 32 rounds. Much better for trench raiding compared to a full-size Mauser 98.

>Soviet uniforms are stylish, practical and distinctive

And it was incredibly stupid.

The USSR had that for its battle dress. But if the commanders think camouflage is the order of the day, then they wore separate one piece, camouflaged coveralls, ON TOP of their battledresses.

The logic being that by not putting camo on the battle dress of a soldier itself, camos can be produced cheaply, and that a trooper could own several camo coveralls for various terrain and conditions without having to change his WWIIish battle dress.

The STG-44 and AK-47 have literally nothing in common mechanically.

He was talking about the ammo, nonce.

They fired 7.92×33mm Kurz, which was an intermediate round.

Commies had spent a good 5 years giving out PPSH-41s like candy. The AK was simply the next step in a weapons tree that proved itself in the largest war in human history. Any arguments were killed by "muh Vistula-Oder Operation" or "muh Stalingrad." On the other hand, America in particular had invested a huge amount in Garands, which to them had proved itself in the largest war in human history. Battle rifles were just the next step in an established weapons tree. Any arguments were killed by "muh Falaise Pocket" or "muh Bulge."

It took a very long time for one of these two groups to realize mistakes might have been made.

Different doctrines. The soviets saw assault rifles as a bigger sub-machine gun while western militaries generally saw assault rifles as a downscaled self-loading rifle. You also have to remember many countries only switched to assault rifles in the 90s, before they mostly used battle rifles in full power 30 cal cartridges.

it worked fine until they were facing unconventional foe like mujaheddin and their snipers. after this they started training marksmen skills better and issuing SVDs more but for a nulcear war in europe having people spray and pray is sufficient

>Soviet uniforms
>at all aesthetic
Rot in Gitmo you commie scum

Which is why you have a designated marksman per squad with a DMR which the Soviets figured out quickly.

Plus most of the issues with the 5.56NATO is the SS-109 projectile being totally shit both terminally and in regards to accuracy.

>Ak-47 inspired by the Ppsh-41
wut?
Soviets experimented with the AVT-40 and SVT-40 early in the war, from there it was a small step to an intermediary round, which the Germans quite effectively presented with the Stg-44.
the AK was an actual break from established weapons, while the Americans stuck quite a bit with their M1 types, only properly switching to intermediary calibers in Vietnam.

>t. never even been near soviet gear

Not so fast!

Russia is basically a farm for hideous firearms.

Part of the reason why Americans were so stubborn about small-caliber ammunition is because they thought riflemen should use the same ammunition as machine gunners to simplify logistics, and 0.30 caliber (7.62) was the minimum acceptable round for a machine gun because they didn't believe that effective tracer rounds could be produced for a smaller caliber. In other words, they thought that a smaller round wouldn't be visible enough to be useful as a tracer. By Vietnam, the chemical composition used in tracer rounds had improved to the extent that making tracers in small caliber rifle rounds was a viable option, and thus Americans were more receptive the concept of adopting a small caliber rifle round.

That's gorgeous.

youtube.com/watch?v=wtjVf724G7w
Such missed potential. The reliability, the recoil, they all seemed so handy.

Funnily enough, the SKS was supposed to fill the role of the mosin nagant as a rifleman. Then they realized there was no point because the ak could be used in the same role.

Honestly, this is more of a /k/westion but I'll answer it here.


Warfare, due to the evolutions of logistic capabilities and mobility did ultimately lead to a need to find a rifle and caliber which better suited the mobility constraints of carrying large amounts of ammunition and the weight of a wood rifle. The age of entrenched warfare was coming to an end, the foreseeable combat was most likely to be maritime, airborne and nuclear exchange-- if a land combat engagement was to be had, it would most likely take place in east Central Europe, which is essentially one gigantic plane. With the nature of a plane, it is flat and expectedly easy for mechanized vehicles and other technicals to traverse, so ultimately the army which could field the fastest and most effective logistics core could win a battle on these planes. Having to take thirteen cargo trucks out of your fleet of say, 200 is far more costly then having to take 10 for the now lighter munitions.

Just a hypothesis to some degree, but I like to think of myself as a long time lurker of /k/ and the threads pertaining to this issue. Hope I brought some food for thought.

Ahh Korobov's madness years.

>invent a simpler, more accurate, easier to produce, and more reliable platform than the AK
>rejected by soviets because they already started to adopt the AK
>break down and build these bullpup bakelite monstrosities

Feel bad for the guy...