NATO reporting name
NATO reporting names are
code names for
Soviet and
Chinese military equipment. These were created to facilitate communications between military units speaking different languages and because in most cases the actual name of the equipment was unknown or did not exist, and in many cases were not known for many years. Much of that equipment can still be found in use around the world, and NATO reporting names are sometimes still used.
NATO maintained lists of these names. The administration of assignment of the names for the Soviet and Chinese aircraft was handled by the five-nation Air Standardization Coordinating Committee (ASCC) which consisted of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
The initial letter of the name indicated something about the use of that equipment; for example,
fighter aircraft were assigned names beginning with the letter
F,
bomber aircraft with
B,
helicopters with
H,
surface-to-surface missiles with
S, and
surface-to-air missiles with
G. For fixed-wing
aircraft, names with one
syllable were used for
propeller-powered craft while two syllable names indicated
jet engines. Perhaps the most famous reporting name is that of the SS-1 ballistic missile, the "
Scud".
The
United States Department of Defense expands on the NATO reporting names in some cases. For example, whereas NATO refers to
surface-to-air missile systems mounted on ships or submarines with the same names as the corresponding land-based systems, despite some minor differences (and in one case, lack of corresponding systems at all, although this was not realized for some time), the US DoD assigns a different series of numbers with a different suffix (SA-N vs. SA) for these systems. The names, however, are kept the same as the land-based system as a convenience. In the case where there is no corresponding system, a new name is devised. Some US DoD nomenclature is included in the following pages and is noted as such.
The Soviet Union did not assign official "popular names" to its aircraft, although unofficial nicknames were common as in any
air force. Most of the time (though not always) the Soviet pilots didn't use NATO names (or the translations of them), usually because they weren't known for a long time, and because later a different Russian nickname had come into being. Many of the names were not particularly flattering, though that is a matter of opinion. For many there was no real overall meaning, others hinted at clever double meanings, and some others have become memorable and feared names. Literally hundreds of different names had to be thought up and chosen, so the names covered a wide variety of subjects. On rare occasions, such as that of the
Fulcrum and
Bear, NATO codenames were found flattering (or at least appropriate) and ended up being used as popular names within Russia.
Since there are only so many words that start with a given letter, many aircraft (and other equipment as well) had unusual names. For example, to the layman,
Backfire sounds like a reference to a plan "backfiring", but in aeronautics, a backfire is a dangerous explosion of fuel out the back of a running jet engine (which can be deadly to ground crews). The bombers had names starting with the letter
B and names like
Badger and
Bear were also used.
Frogfoot, the reporting name for the
Sukhoi Su-25, references the aircraft's close air support role. Transports had names starting with
C, which resulted in names like
Careless as they progressed through the alphabet.
Missiles
*
Air-to-air missiles (names start with the letter
A)
*
Air-to-surface missiles (names start with the letter
K)
*
Anti-tank missiles (names start with the letter
S)
*
Surface-to-air missiles (including ship- and submarine-launched,
G)
*
Surface-to-surface missiles (including ship- and submarine-launched,
SS)
Aircraft
*
Bombers (names start with the letter
B)
*
Fighters (names start with the letter
F)
*
Helicopters (names start with the letter
H)
*
Transports (names start with the letter
C)
*
Miscellaneous (names start with the letter
M)
Submarines
*
Ballistic missile submarines*
Guided missile submarines *
Hunter-killer and experimental submarines*
External list about NATO reporting names*
Air Standardization Coordinating Committee Site
