Sorry guys I didn't expand on it last night but had to watch a movie with the family and then went to bed..........SA did a good job of explaining.......the military thinking was that they wanted a cartridge (7.62) that given the number of 06s still in use, if a screw up happened or troops with 06s ran out of ammo they could still be functional with the "new" cartridge if not necessarily effective. And no, the gas does not escape past the bullet and it can even be reasonably accurate in a military type of accuracy. As SA said the 7.62/308 is designed to squeeze fit the 06 chamber with the shoulder being 2-3 thou larger than the corresponding spot on an 06's body.
I had noted this possibility dimensionally, several years back, but it was Ted (Why Not?) that actually told me that it was, in fact, a design criteria of the military at the time of it's inception.