Black US Project - What's in a name?

[AeroFranz]

I was wondering if anyone knew how 'black' project names are assigned.
For example, "Senior crown", "senior peg", "Have Blue", "Have Lemon", "compass cope", "compass arrow", "compass dwell"...etc., do these names actually mean something, or is it just pairing of random words?
Is there a guy at the Pentagon whose sole task is to open the Webster dictionary at a random page and pick two words?

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Well, see it starts with a team of highly trained monkeys, a blindfold, some darts,vodka, and a dartboard. No not really. I could tell you, but then I'd have to........

 

[Just call me Ray]

Just a guess:

"Have" typically indicates a special mission or function, like "Have Low" and whatnot. Kind of a general designation.

"Senior" seems to indicate specifically a reconnaissance or stealth program.

And guided weapons seem to get a "Pave" prefix.

The suffix part seems to be entirely random, though sometimes the word pairing may be chosen to make sense from the context of the words alone or even as an in-joke: "Senior Year," "Senior Citizen" or "Senior Peg," "Have Lemon" etc.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Andreas Parsch of designation-systems.net of course has an exhaustive source on code names:

http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/codenames.html

 

[AeroFranz]

Of course. i should have thought that if anyone had a page up on this it would be Andreas.
Thanks for the link.

 

[LowObservable]

I wonder whether these will change now that these two-word combinations are so easily found via Google. If you really wanted to keep a program secret these days you would give it the codename HOT MILF.

 

[Hanse]

I wonder whether these will change now that these two-word combinations are so easily found via Google. If you really wanted to keep a program secret these days you would give it the codename HOT MILF.

ROFL!

 

[Kiltonge]

HAVE BLADDER ( 2005 )

The HAVE BLADDER Test Management Project (TMP) was conducted by the USAF Test Pilot
School as part of a NASA study of UAV endurance enhancement using dynamic soaring
maneuvers. HAVE BLADDER determined L-23 Super Blanik stability derivates that will be
used in follow-on efforts to define dynamic soaring maneuvers and required atmospheric
conditions.

www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA469903

 

[Rickshaw]

UK codewords are drawn from a computer generated random list of names. US codewords are often chosen by the inaugurater of the project, as I understand it.

 

[Kiltonge]

US codewords are often chosen by the inaugurater of the project, as I understand it.

I believe that's correct and recently they've tended to be acronyms or even direct references to the project goals. I suppose after a while it becomes quite tiresome to pick a unique and opaque project name which is where the British system has an advantage ( just ask a computer ).

Examples of acronyms:

Have Bat: Boundary Avoidance Tracking
Have Halo: Huron Airborne Link Optimization
Have Murdoc: Multi-Use Rate Disturbance Observer Controller
Have Stav: Supersonic Tailless Air Vehicle

Project self-reference:

Have Prevent: Research into how to prevent Pilot Induced Oscillations
Have Derivatives: Aircraft stability derivative calculation

 

[Gridlock]

While it's slightly OT I'd like to point out that a lot of the GCHQ projects revealed by Snowden were named after items in the game 'Worms' - so no computer there, just geeks my age.