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The
Red Air Force |
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The
Red Air Force |
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The Soviet partnership with the West ended with the final shots of World War Two. During the uneasy peace that followed the Soviets embarked on an aggressive foreign policy that sought to subjugate the governments of Eastern Europe and China. They also began making threats against the West. Naturally the Western nations began taking precautions against a potential Soviet attack. This was made very difficult because of Stalinist secrecy policies and an internal security force that aggressively hunted spies. The result was that NATO received little information from within the USSR.
To remedy this problem the West began overflying Soviet territory to gain information. These flights were often intercepted and some were shot down. The flights provided valuable intelligence, not only about the targets on the ground, but about the aircraft that were sent to intercept them.
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about these aircraft. They only had general ideas of their
capabilities and knew nothing of their names. To make things easier for NATO observers a
system was devised by the United States Air Force in 1947 to identify
new Soviet aircraft and missiles.
Under this system each aircraft and missile would be listed by number, beginning with the first aircraft spotted. Other aircraft would be listed by type as they were observed. The system suffered from a number of problems. The first is that it was difficult to remember as the numbers (eventually reaching 40 numbers) gave no indication to the type of aircraft they represented as helicopters, jet fighters, bombers, and even missiles could be listed next to each other on the list. Another problem was that the codes were difficult to understand when heard over a poor quality radio transmission. |
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A replacement system was devised in 1954 by the NATO Air Standards Coordinating Committee (also known as the ASCC) which was made up of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The system drew heavily on the identification system used by the United States in the Pacific during World War II.
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An aircraft or missile would be named using a single word beginning with a letter depending on the class it belonged to. The name would have one syllable if powered by piston-engines and two syllables if jet powered. Helicopters could have either one or two syllables. Variants of an aircraft would be further designated by the adding a letter at the end of the designation. These would normally be in alphabetical order. |
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This system was a great success and proved much easier for pilots and ground observers to remember as it better associated the aircraft's function with its name. A partial list of NATO code names assigned to Soviet aircraft is given below.
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Antonov Aircraft |
Beriev Aircraft |
Ilyushin Aircraft |
Kamov Aircraft |
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Lavochkin and Lisunov Aircraft |
Mikoyan-Gurevich Aircraft |
Mil Aircraft |
Myasishchyev, Petlyakov, and Polikarpov aircraft |
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| Sukhoi Aircraft | Tupolev Aircraft | Yakovlev Aircraft | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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*Redesignated Aircraft In some cases the ASCC would change the code names given to Soviet aircraft. This was often done because the initial name was perceived as sounding similar to another name or was simply too flattering a designation for a potential enemy. |
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