The military is a place where thoroughness and rigor are emphasized, after all, in combat, any carelessness can bring heavy costs, so the military of any country will minimize the possibility of accidents.
【People's Liberation Army】
In our army, there is a unique system of digital passwords, which is set up to reduce those unexpected situations that could have been avoided, which is also a common practice in the armies of all countries.
The PLA's digital password
If you pay attention to the military development of the PLA, many people will find that there is a big difference between the way the army thinks about numbers and the general public.
【PLA Signal Corps】
In a certain air-ground coordinated exercise of the People's Liberation Army, when the air force's air strike coordinator informed the fighters of the coordinates of the target, it was obviously a string of numbers, but the pronunciation was different from ordinary numbers.
1234567890 are read as two, three, four, five, six, eight hooks, which makes people hear in the clouds, is this for confidentiality?
In fact, the reason why the PLA did this is not complicated, if we follow the normal reading of Arabic numerals, the pronunciation of some numbers will actually be confused, such as 1 and 7.
【PLA Communications】
Many people must have experienced a similar misunderstanding when reporting a phone number to someone else, where the other party listens 7 as 1 or 1 as 7, resulting in communication problems.
In daily life, if 1 and 7 are confused, it is at most a wrong call, but if it is confused when reporting coordinates on the battlefield, it is likely to be the difference between throwing shells on the enemy's head and their own head, and it is absolutely not allowed to be sloppy.
Even if it is an ordinary infantry squad operation, the commander originally arranged to launch a general attack after counting 10 to the bottom, but at this time, if a soldier mishears it because of the noise or nervousness of the battlefield, the commander only counts to 7 and rushes up, which is likely to expose the whereabouts of the entire unit.
【Air-Ground Cooperative Operations】
The mainland is a multi-ethnic and multi-regional country, and soldiers in different places have different accents, which can also lead to problems in the transmission of information, and there have been many jokes in the People's Liberation Army about misunderstandings due to accents.
Veterans who have participated in live-fire confrontations or live-fire drills know that it is very difficult to rely on human voice communication when firing light and heavy weapons, which is why more and more countries are now equipping their soldiers with noise-canceling pickup headphones.
But even with headphones, current and signal interference can make the sound difficult to identify, so it is necessary to distinguish the pronunciation itself.
【PLA Command Center】
And the number reading method implemented by our army is not completely unrelated to numbers, for example, the turning is the writing of 7, and the hole is the pictogram of 0, which is also very easy to understand for ordinary soldiers, and they will soon be able to remember the different readings of these numbers.
The military is a place where accidents should be excluded as much as possible, and this is a good way to ensure that orders are conveyed with rigor, and that there will be no changes in the content after being paraphrased by many people.
Although the degree of modernization and informatization of the PLA is very high today, there are still many situations that require personnel to communicate and convey information.
【PLA Military Exercise】
Therefore, this set of digital passwords will continue to play a role in the PLA group and make great contributions to the PLA's operations.
The alphabet pronunciation of the U.S. military
In fact, this practice not only appears in the Chinese military, but the American military actually has a set of pronouns, but the numbers are quite different in English, so the US military pronouns are letters.
【U.S. Army】
For example, A is alpha, B is bravo, and C is Charlie, if you read B and D separately, it is easy to get confused, but if you read bravo and delta, you will be separated at once.
Another advantage of this approach is that it has formed some unique totems of the troops, such as the well-known delta special forces, whose unit number is SFOD-D, so it is also called delta, which means delta in English.
Therefore, the coat of arms of this unit is also in the shape of a delta, which is easy to distinguish from other units.
【Delta Special Forces】
It is very interesting that the letter code of the US military has changed with the times, such as the famous E Company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II, which was called eazy at the time, but today the E Company in the US Army is called echo, and the letter code has become a part of the military culture of the US Army.
Of course, the code name of the letter is not all used in the number of the unit, and some weapon models will also use this name.
For example, the long-barreled 76 gun Sherman M4A3E8 equipped with the U.S. Army in the late World War II was called the EAZY EIGHT by U.S. soldiers to distinguish it from other Sherman tanks.
To this day, law enforcement agencies in the United States have also popularized this militarized name in action, and many Hollywood movies have a plot of reporting license plate numbers, and you can identify whether the person has a law enforcement agency or military background by reporting the license plate number of the character.
【U.S. License Plate】
These readings are already muscle memory for these people, and it is difficult to forget even if they retire and retire.
Many domestic military movies focus on romance and love, but ignore these small details in the barracks, which is extremely wrong, the People's Liberation Army as a fairly professional modern army, many things have an independent system, and these systems are precisely the symbols of our army's combat effectiveness, and they must not be simply ignored.
There are so many small details like these in the armies of various countries, and although they sometimes seem redundant, they are all obtained at great cost on the battlefield, so they must not be taken lightly.
【U.S. Army】
In fact, as a civilian, it is also a common sense to understand the meaning of these pronunciations, and when unexpected situations come, you may be able to give yourself a head start.
Sources:
[1] Ma Xiaoding, Feng Heping, eds., Handbook of Military Academy Cadets, Beijing, Blue Sky Publishing House, 1989.11, p. 191
[2] Based on the original 18 group armies, adjust and form 13 group armies.xinhuanet [Citation date:2022-08-17]