1963 Missile Designation System

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CaseyKnight

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From what I remember, the DoD created a unified missile-designation system in 1963 under McNamara's direction. Did the designation system follow any logical pattern such as a chronological one?

I have some limited data available but the dates don't seem to line up.
 
The most glaring being the F-35 and B-21. Dumb as the reason is at least we know how "F-35" happened. I get the impression, "B-21" came from a marketing team with "B-3" ruled not being aesthetically pleasing enough.
 
sferrin said:
The most glaring being the F-35 and B-21. Dumb as the reason is at least we know how "F-35" happened. I get the impression, "B-21" came from a marketing team with "B-3" ruled not being aesthetically pleasing enough.
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Not missiles, though.
 
sferrin said:
Did THAAD, PAC-3 or GBI even get designations?
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PAC-3 is apparently MIM-104F (yes, including MSE). Wiki cites the PEO Weapon Systems book for that. It's a terrible abuse of the system, considering how different PAC-3 is from the original Patriot, but at least it is a designation.

THAAD is apparently MIM-401, which is also out of sequence, but there you go.

Army Publishing Directorate

armypubs.army.mil armypubs.army.mil
 
For GBI, I've got nothing. I think MDA just does its own thing.
 
The PAC-3 should've received a new tri-services number as it is a Patriot missile in name only.

TomS said:
For GBI, I've got nothing. I think MDA just does its own thing.
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Being a silo-launched interceptor missile part of its tri-services designation will be LIM (So LIM-XXXA), maybe emailing the US DoD would clarify the matter or perhaps someone at the "Aviation Week and Space Technology" magazine may know.
 
NMaude said:
The PAC-3 should've received a new tri-services number as it is a Patriot missile in name only.



Being a silo-launched interceptor missile part of its tri-services designation will be LIM (So LIM-XXXA), maybe emailing the US DoD would clarify the matter or perhaps someone at the "Aviation Week and Space Technology" magazine may know.
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What should happen and what actually happened are obviously different.

I'm not convinced that GBI has received a LIM designation. We know that MDA targets get very non-standard designations that are closely held within the organization, and it looks like GBI may be in the same boat.
 
sferrin said:
The most glaring being the F-35 and B-21. Dumb as the reason is at least we know how "F-35" happened. I get the impression, "B-21" came from a marketing team with "B-3" ruled not being aesthetically pleasing enough.
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I remember hearing "B-21" came from someone in Pentagon misreading "B-2I", as in "B-2 Improved"(which supposedly was a placeholder name used by Northrop Grumman), and no one had the courage to correct the guy who did it. Whether this is true or not, no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true.
 
gral_rj said:
I remember hearing "B-21" came from someone in Pentagon misreading "B-2I", as in "B-2 Improved"(which supposedly was a placeholder name used by Northrop Grumman), and no one had the courage to correct the guy who did it. Whether this is true or not, no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true.
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No.

1) the B-21 is not an improved B-2 and the only "evidence" in favor of that notion is one clearly humorous post on Reddit

2) they actually explained the origin of the designation in the announcement. "The designation B-21 recognizes the Raider as the first bomber of the 21st century."

It's dumb, but deliberate.
 
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aim9xray said:
No, the B-52.
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Beat me to it.

I'm pretty sure there will still be some life left in the wings in 2099, since they have some 17-20 thousand hours remaining. At 200 hours/year flight usage, that's 85-100 more years flying!

Gonna be fun when Congresscritters realize that their kids are flying in a plane flown by their great-great-grandfathers...
 
TomS said:
sferrin said:
The most glaring being the F-35 and B-21. Dumb as the reason is at least we know how "F-35" happened. I get the impression, "B-21" came from a marketing team with "B-3" ruled not being aesthetically pleasing enough.
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Not missiles, though.
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True.

For missiles, an example would be the LGM-35A "Sentinel". Has anyone heard any rationale for this wildly out-of-sequence designation? It seems quite strange, especially since LGM-182 had already been allocated for the GBSD missile.
 
TomS said:
PAC-3 is apparently MIM-104F (yes, including MSE). Wiki cites the PEO Weapon Systems book for that. It's a terrible abuse of the system, considering how different PAC-3 is from the original Patriot, but at least it is a designation.
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Wikipedia references this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20161227050918/https://www.msl.army.mil/documents/peoweaponsystems.pdf
In the PDF, it says "Printed in 2012".

But if you google for this "Weapon Systems Book", you find a newer edition ("Printed in 2016"): https://www.dau.edu/sites/default/files/Migrated/CopDocuments/PEO MS 2016 Weapon Systems Book.pdf
This quotes a designation M91 for PAC-3 and XM400 for PAC-3 MSE.

Google also finds a few references to things like "GUIDED MISSILE INTERCEPT - AERIAL MIM-104, M91 SERIES AND XM400 SERIES" on army.mil sites.
 
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Andreas Parsch said:
Wikipedia references this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20161227050918/https://www.msl.army.mil/documents/peoweaponsystems.pdf
In the PDF, it says "Printed in 2012".

But if you google for this "Weapon Systems Book", you find a newer edition ("Printed in 2016"): https://www.dau.edu/sites/default/files/Migrated/CopDocuments/PEO MS 2016 Weapon Systems Book.pdf
This quotes a designation M91 for PAC-3 and XM400 for PAC-3 MSE.

Google also finds a few references to things like "GUIDED MISSILE INTERCEPT - AERIAL MIM-104, M91 SERIES AND XM400 SERIES" on army.mil sites.
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And one widely sold model kit, which is impressive that they figured it out and none of us knew.

Of course, these M91 and XM400 designation make no sense in any known DoD designation system. I assume it's thanks to MDA's involvement -- they seem to have a deep aversion to using official DoD nomenclature for almost anything. I can't decide if it's just ignorance or a deliberate deception effort.
 
Andreas Parsch said:
(X)M<number> usually falls under MIL-STD-1464 Army Nomenclature System.
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But Army missiles have been getting MDS designations since 1963. The only exceptions seem to belong to MDA (in keeping with MDA's persistent opacity about ballistic missile targets.)

This feels like another case where they use designations that kinda sorta fit an old system (like giving FME aircraft century numbers) rather than assigning proper numbers in the current one. Whether it's for deception or just perversity is hard to tell.
 
Andreas Parsch said:
(X)M<number> usually falls under MIL-STD-1464 Army Nomenclature System.
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Thanks for the MIL-STD refferrence:).

I just checked out your website, Andreas, and i'm pleased to see you've updated your list of US guided missiles:).
 

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