I’ve read a little Clancy, and a recent visit to the Sikorsky page got me wondering: What do HAVE and PAVE mean in military project designations? For example, Sikorsky has a variant of the Black Hawk helicopter called PAVE HAWK. I’ve also read about HAVE BLUE, which was apparently the F-117 program back in the 1970s.
There’s also PAVE PAWS, which is not an aircraft, and PAVE LOW which is a helicopter. The page says that “PAVE is an Air Force program name”. So what is HAVE?
Clancy mentions COBRA JUDY, a ship, in one of his novels. Does that have meaning? Or is it just a random cover name?
I have no way to verify the accuracy of this page, but according to [url=“http://www.aerofiles.com/pave.html”]The Acronym that Wasn’t*, the words are not supposed to mean anything, simply (vaguely) tying together different projects. Given that the MH-53J tactical intruder aircraft and the PAWS strategic radar unit both get a PAVE prifix in the name, I suspect that we aren’t going to be given a definition very soon.
Interesting. Making an assumption from that page, PAVE would be an air force project and HAVE would be a DARPA project. Their definition of COBRA seems in line with COBRA JUDY.
Yeah, I “knew” (okay, “thought”) that the words HAVE, PAVE, COBRA, etc. were meaningless insofar as they weren’t acronyms for anything; but I thought that they may indicate a certain “type” or “category” of project, which seems to be supprted by the link.
Don’t forget the Pave Penny laser designator.