Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers
The US military made maps during the Cold War too, of course, but the two superpowers had different mapping strategies that reflected their different military strengths … the US military rarely made maps more detailed than 1:250,000, and generally only did so for areas of special strategic interest. “The Soviets, on the other hand, were the global leaders in tank technology,” Forbes says. “One to 50,000 scale is globally considered among the military to be the tactical scale for ground forces,” Forbes says.
Phi Beta Iota: We are using Soviet 1:100,000 in Somalia because the National Geospatial Agency (NGA) has lost sight of its core mission.
See Especially:
1995 Open Sources and the Virtual Intelligence Community (with MC&G Emphasis)
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