For instance, “Muscle 1, Bear 2, Basher 52, Irene 3, Spooky 43, Frank 1, Luke 1”
Does some military ATC create these names on the fly or pick out of an ATC namebook?
And why would there be Basher 51/52 if there wasn’t Bashers 1-50?
Mission planners pick the flight and aircraft callsigns, not ATC.
At least in USAF …
In peacetime each squadron is assigned a short list of callsign words/names. Some units, more often heavies, have just one assigned callword/callname. Which name(s) the unit will use every day over and over and over for years at a crack before they’re all revised / refreshed with new words.
When a unit schedules a mission the scheduling section picks a name from their short list of name(s) and also picks a number. Typically numbers are assigned sorta-sequentially over the course of a day or a week.
When the military flight plan is filed with the civil aviation regulator’s flight planning system the civilians learn what the mission will be called. That info gets to civil (and military) ATC so they know to expect Bombnutz 34 to depart Burpleson AFB at about 1330Z on Tuesday and fly route XYZ to Eaker AFB arriving at 1845Z.
The wartime situation gets messier; on the one hand using the same callsigns over and over helps all your people keep straight who’s who and helps them to know what callsigns represent what sort of capability. OTOH, it hands similarly useful info to the enemy.
Depending on how much you’re relying on civil ATC and non-secure radios, how sophisticated your enemy is, and on what they could usefully do with the info if they do suss out who/what is who, TPTB may choose to randomize everything, or just keep using the same callsigns day after day peacetime style.
The question was about military callsigns, but it’s an interesting situation in civilian aviation too.
Callsigns actually have to be approved. I don’t know all the details, but one aspect is they have to be pronounceable in a way that isn’t confusing on the radio. I once worked for an airline that couldn’t simply use its name as the callsign because it sounded too similar to another word commonly heard in aviation.
There’s also the issue of how the flight is abbreviated and numbered on the ATC “strip”. At that same airline I worked at, pilots could actually choose the number for their flights (this was some time ago in a rural base). But you know how you can spell rude words by using upside-down numbers on a calculator? Some of the pilots figured out they could use the combination of the first three letters of the airline plus some numbers to “spell” some expletives. Company nixed the practice of pilots numbering their flights soon after.
In the Army there are two types of call signs. So called Hollywood call signs and what is found in the SOI (signal operating instructions). The SOI changes daily. SOI for an individual aircraft will be something like A2B65. That’s what is used in combat or in combat like training.
ATC only comes into play when you are in controlled airspace. With ATC you use the tail number of the aircraft. So it would be something like Army 16534.
In the Army there generally aren’t any individualized Hollywood call signs. The company nickname is picked by the company and can last for years or until the next commander doesn’t like it. There are numbers traditionally assigned to positions. The commander is 6, the executive officer is 5 etc. So the commander of A company (Avengers) would go by Avenger6.
Thanks, great info everyone.
Who makes sure that two units don’t have similar-sounding nicknames, to prevent radio confusion?
Those unofficial Hollywood call signs are just for local FM radio nets. Everyone within a battalion will know what the other units are called. If communication is needed with either higher units or adjoining units all that information is in the SOI. It would be extremely rare for that type of communication in any situation where Hollywood call signs are used.