Operation Downfall, Operation Overlord, Operation Iraqi Freedom…etc. Who comes up with these names? The civilian government? The military commanders? What is the process by which operation names come into being? Do they have to be approved? If I’m the operational commander of a theater of war, can I name an invasion “Operation Go Fuck Yourself”? or some other crude name?
Nowadays it seems to be White House spin doctors in consultation with an ad agency.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1995/sieminsk.htm
There is a book out there, and the title escapes me, that covers all of the past and present operational names for programs and exercises. I’d seen the book in a Barnes & Noble last year and considered picking it up, but the point is, someone seemed to go through the extensive research of finding so many operational names (including flagwords like PINNACLE, NUCFLASH, etc.) that he could write a book.
For major campaign-level stuff, blue infinity is right: it’s PR people. For the lower operational level stuff, it’s headquarters’ staffs with coordination from cooperating nations’ forces (if they’re involved).
Tripler
I wish I could remember the name of that book.
Isn’t that somebody Paul in Qatar? Hasn’t he wrote a book on the history of military operation names?
I know that sometimes it is the guys with the boots on the ground that make up names for things. I know that I have 2 beaches named after D&D characters of mine in Libya [I was dating the cartographer at the time] They have to rename geographical features so if someone picks up talk, they dont know where you are talking about.
Militaries name lots of things - units, locations, radio frequencies, operations, etc. Many of these names have to be changed on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis.
Naming things may not be a full-time job, but it probably comes close. Personally, I have no idea who’s responsible for it - probably some mid-level officer at Operations. The Israeli military always claims that names are selected randomly by a computer, but no-one believes them.
…”roughly ten thousand common nous and adjectives, non-descriptive of operations and geography, were compiled early in the war under the direction of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff. After selection, the alphabetical order of the words was scrambled, the list was published in a classified catalogue, and blocks of words were assigned to each theater of operations and the Zone of the Interior of the United States. Local headquarters in each theater later added to this original list code names that either were not restricted to common nous and adjectives or were descriptive of the designated operation”
Dwight Eisenhower
Crusade in Europe
Glossary of Military Code Names, pg. 518
Probable that they still weeded-out silly names like Platypus or Sour Cream, but in WWII they were more concerned with non-descriptive names that wouldn’t give anything away, than sloganeering as in operations “Just Cause” or “Enduring Freedom.”
Interesting answers. Thanks.
The Israelis still take the prize for best operation name ever.
Law enforcement names may be different. In my area, they create a list of words whose initial letter codes for a year of commencement and other things like the police unit with primary responsibility for the operation. As operations are commenced, they pick the next words from the list. Usually there are two names, and they tend to be nonsense names for obvious security reasons. An example is Operation Delta Fluid. They found that if they let operational police make up names, they sometimes risked security by encoding jokes and sly references to the target or other details that could be rumbled.
“Gothic Serpent”?
Yes, I am the self-appointed World’s Leading Authority on this subject. From time to time, from place to place, there have been numerous systems (the British currently use a computer list, the French insist on “nature” names). But no system withstands for long the desire of local commanders to make stuff up.
(Then there is the issue of people misunderstanding what the boss said. “Satellite” somehow became “Starlite.”)
In most militaries, lists are maintained by some central office, but it seems police agencies simply like cool names. But as a practical matter, yes local commanders tend to make up names in the US military.
Does that help?
Certain classified projects (not operations) use six-character nouns. For example, WINDOW in WWII. I know of another, more recent one, but I’m not going to tell you it.
I’d like to know other naming conventions. For example, what kind of projects use ‘HAVE’ in their names? HAVE BLUE was the code name for the proof-of-concept F-117. I know I heard another ‘HAVE’ project, but I can’t find anything on the web about it. Like BLUE, it’s a four-character adjective. PAVE codewords relate to electronic systems.
Not that I expect to learn what kind of projects HAVE are. I’m just curious. I do not have NTK.
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Are you thinking of Have Nap? The only commonality I can think of off-hand beween Have Blue and Have Nap is that they both came out of Lockheed, and they’re both primarily Air-to-Ground systems.
No, it was not HAVE NAP. I’ve just found this list. I can look at the HAVE projects to see if there is a common theme.
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Nobody wants to hear that their son died on Operation FLUFFY BUNNY or something (Churchill supposedly said something of this sort).
Recently GRAPPLE, which had been used for the Christmas Island H-bomb tests, got used again for the intervention in Bosnia. Confusing.
Thanks for linking to those articles, they were very insightful.
From my book, copyright me,
HAVE (U.S.) A reserved first word that designates the programs and projects of the United States Air Force’s System Command. This command is responsible for the development of many items of equipment that inevitably keep the name under which they were developed.
*
and, for example
*HASTY
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(Allied 44) Small airborne raid on bridges in Italy as part of DIADEM in June, 1944.
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(U.S.) A reserved first word designated the programs and projects of the United States Air Force’s Air Training Command.
My favorite is Operation Mincemeat.