I have rewritten my old article on Chinese Military Aircraft Designations, and included a short section on the designation system, which is the topic of this thread:
Uniformized Designation System for Military Equipment
It touches only the tip of the iceberg, and has the focus on aerospace-related designators (aircraft, missiles). Also, I didn't find anything close to an authoritative source, but had to work with bits and pieces here and there, and connect some of the dots.
Regarding the questions from the post before this one ...
Unless I am totally mistaken about how the system works, the answer should be K/JJH7A.
Indeed it doesn't, and I risk the guess that K/AJJ7E is not a real designation at all, or at doesn't designate an aircraft. The "A" immediately behind the slash designates a missile. There is at least one Navy ship-to-ship missile, which has a designation code "H/AJJ
nn".
Oh you rewrote that? Nice! I remember checking that a while ago but it didn't include the penta-service naming system so I went to look elsewhere. Good to see it updated.
K/JJH7A is what I currently have it down as. I also agree that K/AJJ is likely not real because it just doesn't make sense and A is missiles. That also would make sense because, as you said, AJJ is already AShMs. The YJ8 and YJ8A are the H/AJJ08 and H/AJJ08A. I am curious where you find K/JWR6A because that's a UAV and I've been looking for the penta-service name for the GJ1 for a while.
Also, I did notice a bit of a mistake in your article on that section. The scheme you are talking about is called the Penta-Service Naming Scheme. However, you're combining a few different naming schemes in your explanation because China has had so many different naming schemes and they each contradict all the others. I originally posted this forum post in May, but since then, I have learned a lot and know what's going on here a bit better now.
Here's what's going on with them in a timeline.
1964 - China introduces the J, H, etc. names aircraft, abandoning the very inconsistent system they used before (that sometimes used Type, sometimes used Dongfeng, and was just all over the place). This is where J5, J6, H5, etc., all first appear.
1987 - China formalizes a bunch of stuff.
- Ground vehicles get the 3 letter naming scheme (ZTZ, ZDF, etc.). However, this scheme does not backnbame existing vehicles. Those older ones keep their Type names. From this point forward, new Type names do not exist anymore (this is why names like Type 99 for the ZTZ99 are ficticious).
- Other things also get 3 letter codes (e.g. guns become ZPL for rifled tank guns, ZPT for smoothbore tank guns, QJC for vehicle-mounted anti-aircraft MGs, etc.). This also does not backname existing weapons. For example, the new ZPL94 105 mm rifled tank gun used on the ZTZ88A officially became the ZPL1994式105毫米坦克炮, but the Type 83A 105 mm rifled tank gun used on the ZTZ88B (which is confusingly before the ZTZ88A) remained the 1983A年式105毫米坦克炮.
- This seems to also be when they started abandoning hyphonated numbers as variant designations and moving towards letters, but because there is no backnaming involved, you end up with a confusing mix (e.g. the Type 59-1 main battle tank, but ZPT88C smoothbore tank gun). However, since weaons never got backnamed, there to this day exists some weapons with hyphonated numbers (like the Type 85-1 APFSDS round).
- As an aside, Arabic numerals were used for domestic hyphonated number names, while Roman numerals were used for export (e.g. the Type 63-2 APC used -2 because it was domestic, but the 69-II MBT used -II because it was export).
- Aircraft and their equipment are formalized again. This has a lot of overlap with the 1964 system, but is more consistent. It also formalizes missile pylons to PF and stuff like that. This system does backname existing aircraft, not just new ones. The aircraft naming rework is done in this document called HB 6126-1987 航空主机产品型号命名. I've attached the full document to this message.
2003 - China renames a bunch of stuff again.
- Ground vehicles get a new 3 letter code system such as ZSD, ZJJ, etc. Some vehicles before 2003 did have a 3 letter scheme from the 1987 naming scheme such as the ZDF89, but those were renamed too (e.g. the ZDF89 became ZPT89, no relation to the ZPT designations for guns). ZTZ was one of the few designations that carried over from the 1987 scheme to the 2003 scheme. This system did backname existing vehicles. This backnaming also finally got rid of the -[number] naming scheme in ground vehicles for good (e.g. Type 59-1 became ZTZ59A, Type 63-2 became ZSD63B, etc.) This was done in a document called GJB 4528-2002 装甲车辆命名细则 (it was promulgated on 8 February 2003 but appears to have been written in 2002). I have attached this document to this message as well.
- There might have been an aircraft and other stuff renaming scheme too. K/, H/, etc., start appearing on the internet by around 2010, specifically in an old forum post on the Sino Defense Forums, so it probably existed in some capacity. It may have been renamed in 2003 if China did another bulk renaming like in 1987, but we have no evidence of this. We just know that ground vehicles happened here.
2012 - the Penta-Service Naming Scheme (China finally learns what consistent standardization is,
almost)
- They basically redid everything here. A lot of abbreviations stayed the same (e.g. tanks are still ZTZ, smoothmore tank guns are still ZPT, planes are still J (K/JJ not withstanding, the extra J in front means aircraft, the second J is the same J as in the older scheme meaning fighter), helicopters are still Z, etc.). Some abbreviations did change. For example, in ground vehicles, the letter L (which was for wheeled vehicles) was moved to be in the second position, rather than the third (this is why ZLT11 is actually correct, while ZTL11 was only correct for 1 year before the new naming scheme was introduced). This was all done in a document called 中国人民解放军装备命名规定 which is, maddeningly, not public, so we have to go off scraps. This is why the K/, H/, E/, etc. thing is so hard to come by. This naming scheme has a bunch of really bizarre quirks to it, so I'll try to break them down. Please keep in mind that everything at this point is what I have managed to gather is based on scraps and is unconfirmed.
- Things for the PLAGF do not have a X/ code. You will see L/ thrown around sometimes, it even appears in some official Taiwanese MoD documents and it convinced me for a while, but it does not appear to be real. My personal hypothesis for why is that the system considers the PLAGF the base of the military, with the other services considered branches from the base and then the branches have these X/ codes. I have no evidence for this whatsoever, this is just my personal hypothesis for making sense of this. These X/ codes possibly existed before this, maybe as early as 2003 (this is just a guess based on when the ground vehicle renaming is, no direct evidence), but they are certainly formalized here.
- For ground vehicles, not much has changed. L for wheeled is in the second position now and stuff like that, but it's mostly the same. Ground vehicles keep using letters for their variants (remember this, it will be important later). It backnames everything in service, I think. I am not sure on that.
- There's a couple oddities like the new ZBD04AK1 where the AK1 part of the naming scheme is not a consistent variant designator, but treat that as a one-off. Sometimes vehicles have one-off variant names. The K probably stands for something in Chinese, I don't exactly know, and the 1 doesn't make much sense either.
- For aircraft, things also mostly stay the same. The K/JJ thing might exist here. K/JJ, K/JH, K/JJH, etc., are all still unclear, but I think might be real and if so, exist by here.
- For helicopters, it's unclear. They might be JZ, they might just be Z, it could go either way. Just Z is probably a safer assumption.
- For weapons, it gets murky. Weapons now have 2 naming schemes that exist at the same time. One is the 2 letter codes. HJ, YJ, PL, etc., all of these codes are still official. Which ones use hyphons is unclear, but my guess based on that 1987 document for aircraft HB 6126-1987 is that aircraft ones don't use them and ground ones too (so PL15 and YJ81, but HJ-8). Both the Chinese character and English letter writings of them appear to be equally official, and that has been true for as long as they have existed (since well before 1987). At the same time, they also have their 3 letter penta-service names. PL missiles are all AKK, but for others it's messy. For example, the YJ8s get a bunch of stuff (YJs become AJJ, AQJ, AJQ, AKJ, etc.). The numbers also don't always match up. For example, the YJ8 becomes the H/AJJ08. It keeps the number. But the YJ81, which is also in the YJ8 family, gets subsumed into the 08 number, becoming the H/AKJ08. Not everything is like that though (I think H/AKJ83 is still correct for the YJ83K even though it is part of the YJ8 family, I don't remember, don't trust me on that specific example; the point is that numbers between 2 letter codes and penta-service names are not always the same, but usually are). While both of these are official, the 3 letter penta-service names seem to maybe be a bit more official.
- For guns, there's a special kind of confusion that I really hate. They got a bunch of new abbreviations, once again with no backnaming, but more importantly, they abandoned letters for variants. Instead, they went back to the old numbers. The first variant is 1, the second is 2, the third is 3, etc., but with no hyphons. So for the QBZ19, the first variant is the QBZ191. 19 is still the year, 2019, and 1 means the first variant. If they hypothetically make another version in the future, instead of it being QBZ19A or QBZ191A, it would be QBZ192. In every previous system, the extended forms of names have used the full years (so ZTZ1999, ZPT1994, etc.). I have no idea if that applies here. It could be QBZ20191, it could be QBZ191 only. I would guess it's just QBZ191, but I have no evidence either way. This is also how we end up with things like ZPL151 for the ZTQ15's gun.
- This new variant naming system is why I said to remember that tanks and other vehicles keep letter designations (for example, the ZBD04AK1 and the brand new ZTZ99B).
- There's 1 final, big piece of confusion in the Penta-Service Naming Scheme: the new ZTZ100 tank and the Type 100 support vehicles (I don't remember its 3 letter abbreviation, it does have one though). To put it bluntly: I have no idea what's going on here. Is it a one-off? Is it a prototype thing? Is it a continuation after ZTZ99 under a new system where they increment the numbers by 1 each time (so 99 --> 100)? Is it a new naming scheme entirely? Is it a new naming scheme only for vehicle families because multiple things use the same chassis? I don't know, it could be any of those (it's probably not the prototype thing). I guess we'll see in the future.
I know this was extremely long but I hope it helped explain it in more detail because the article kind of combines the 1987, 2003, and 2012 schemes. If you know anything about the GJ1 or find more on the K/JJ thing, let me know please.
. And for aircraft and missiles, what you describe as the current practice looks like a good match to what I wrote on my webpage. But I'm going to update the short paragraph about the development timeline of the unified system.
