Since the Cold War, Russian / Soviet aircraft are typically referred to be their NATO reporting name. That is to say, the name that the USA and our NATO allies call them, not what the actual Russian military or aircraft manufacturer calls them.
For example, the Mikoyan MiG-31 FOXHOUND. Other fighter aircraft have names like FLANKER, FULCRUM, or even the fictional FIREFOX. Bombers are BEAR, BLACKJACK, and so on).
Do the Russians not name their aircraft or are they unpronounceable by most Westerners? Wikipedia says the Russian name is “Микоян Ми-31”, but that’s just Mikoyan MiG-31 in a different language.
As a kid I thought they might be secret but how secret could the name of a mass-produced aircraft that is exported to a dozen countries be?
In the Soviet era they did not name them publicly. Or at least that’s not how NATO found out about them, a new plane would normally be seen in a satellite image or some other covert means, long before they were publicly shown off at a airshow, etc. So they used code words, and that’s how that model was known in the west.
The habit stuck after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I assume they aren’t coming up with new code names though, they just use the Russian name.
The Soviets were real good at coming up with multiple names and design numbers for the same vehicle. And also naming/numbering different vehicles with the same name/number. Sometimes for internal political reasons like a complete successor redesign is simply labeled the “improved [whatever]” to disguise the fact that the v1 design was a total failure.
The Russians have continued the same bureaucratic and obfuscational habits unto today.
The NATO naming system (Flanker, Bear, etc.) was designed to be logical, easy for people to remember, easy for people speaking multiple languages to understand each other, etc. It is still used for new-production Russian designs.
Note that the system covers airplanes, helos, missiles of all sorts, radars of all sorts, and submarines. See
Apparently the Russians don’t actually have names for their aircraft like we do (Tomcat, Eagle, Raptor, etc). In the case of the Mig-29, I’ve read that they adopted the NATO “FULCRUM” nickname because they thought it sounded cool.
The purpose of code words is to have effective internal communication. Compare to biologists who have the binomial nomenclature system instead of the confusing mess of colloquial words. Likewise, our forces have their own precise set of words to describe their own and others’ forces.
Unlike the Russians, the Chinese are pretty transparent about their machine’s official military designations and names. They keep it under wraps until they’re ready to unveal them to the public, theirs and everyone else’s. But after that it’s not so different from typical Western practice.
NATO analysts don’t speak Mandarin, most of them anyway.
Most of the NATO nomenclatures are English, although most of the member countries of NATO don’t speak primarily English. So that tells you whose convenience those names are actually for.
There’s a code naming tradition in the U.S. military that goes back at least to WWII. It was easier to refer to a type of Japanese plane as “Oscar” instead of Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, for example.
The official NATO languages are English and French, and considering that three of the twelve founding members of the alliance were Anglophone and also the ones with the most combat power at founding, it does make sense that English would be the de-facto language of the alliance.
Major surface ships certainly had Soviet Navy officially publicized names and hull numbers. And we used them. We also used the Soviet class names for ship types. e.g. Sovremenny-class destroyer - Wikipedia.
I think those are also NATO reporting names
Oscar = Project 949 Granit and Project 949A Antey
Akula = Project 971 Shchuka-B
Typhoon = Project 941 Akula (“Akula” apparently means “shark” in Russian)
But it seems like many Russian subs also had actual names.
When actual ship names were made public, they were used to identify the specific ship in Western documents and media.
Hence (for example), the (unfortunate) Kursk, hull number K-141, of Project 949A Antey class (NATO reporting name OSCAR II). Named for the eponymous Great Patriotic War battle.