NATO reporting name

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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 (i.e., 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 as common as in any air force. Most of the time (though not always) the Soviet pilots did not use the NATO names (or the translations thereof), usually because they were not 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, Bear, and Blackjack 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 (as in “cargo”), which resulted in names like Careless or Candid as they progressed through the alphabet.