The war in Afghanistan was the last large-scale armed conflict in which the Soviet Union took part. "Vietnam for the Russians" became a serious test for the army and society, leaving serious wounds in the minds of thousands of people. For many compatriots, it was the Afghan war that became the first accessible and eloquent illustration of what kind of shape armed conflicts will take on at the turn of two centuries.
The Soviet man had a chance to fight in Asia long before the Afghan epic. Many armed clashes in the region took place during the years of the civil war. Although Afghanistan lies even further south of Central Asia, the theater of operations there is quite similar. Moreover, the Soviet Union already had some experience in conducting military operations in mountainous regions during the Second World War during the Battle for the Caucasus. Despite all this. Afghanistan became a serious test for the Soviet army.
The specifics of the theater of operations forced the soldiers to go to a number of tricks in order to increase the effectiveness of their own weapons. One of these techniques was the famous "Afghan tulip". It looks extremely simple - it is a fragmentation grenade with a pin pulled out, placed in a faceted glass. Why was this done? In fact, everything is quite simple.
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The Afghan Tulip is a makeshift delayed action grenade.
The fact is that the vast majority of Soviet army grenades had detonators that made the grenade explode 3-4 seconds after the fighter released the safety clip. However, in the conditions of the Afghan terrain, it quickly became clear that 3 seconds for a grenade to fly is sometimes not enough. and the ammunition explodes while still in the air, causing minimal damage to the enemy. Therefore, Soviet soldiers began to convert grenades into "contact" grenades, inserting them into a glass. In this case, the grenade exploded either after falling out of the glass during the flight, or after the glass hit the ground and broke. In any case, the detonation occurred later by a few seconds.
In continuation of the topic, read about why on the tower of German tanks a strange hatch was made.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/071221/61495/