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Article Excerpt
Okay, quick ... what should the Joint Strike Fighter have been designated? If you answered F-35, you are in a minority. The problem here is that the last acknowledged fighter designation in the U.S. military was the Northrop YF-23. Logically, the Joint Strike Fighter should have been the F-24 (excepting the persistent rumor that there is a classified F-24 project already flying at Groom Lake, in which case the JSF should have been F-25). So why is it the F-35?
A Primer
Disclaimer: this article only covers the major designation systems used by the U.S. military; there are other minor ones not discussed here. Several other countries also have specific codified designation systems, as does NATO (used for Soviet/Russian systems) and these are also not discussed.
The United States Army accepted its first aircraft in 1909, but a formal designation system was not established until 1919. Given the small number of airplanes involved, this was not an immediate problem. In many ways, this first system established the designations we have all become familiar with, but this is not obvious at a quick glance. There were 15 basic mission types, such as 'PA' for Pursuit-Air-Cooled and 'PW' for Pursuit-Water-Cooled, followed by a sequential number indicating how many different designs of that type had been ordered.
This system proved somewhat complicated, however, and in 1924 a simplified system was adopted that reduced the basic mission types to only ten. Perhaps the largest change came in the pursuit category, which replaced the previous five designations with a simple 'P' for Pursuit. Over the next 20 years an additional 22 basic mission types would be introduced and this was the system used by the Army during World War II.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Navy went a completely different route than the Army. Beginning in 1911, the Navy adopted a system where each manufacturer and major type had a letter assigned sequentially in the order the aircraft were procured ('A' was for Curtiss land planes, 'B' for Wright land planes, 'C' for Curtiss flying boats, etc.). A digit followed the letter, indicating how many designs from that manufacturer had been purchased (B-1 was the first Wright land plane design; B-2 was the second, etc.).
This system only lasted three years before the Navy decided it made more sense to sequentially number designs by class (heavier-than-air, balloon, etc.) and type (flying boat, land plane, etc.). However, this approach never really caught on, and the Navy essentially used manufacturer model numbers from 1917 through 1922.
In 1923, the Navy implemented the system familiar to those who study World War II history. This time the emphasis was placed on the type of aircraft (the first letter or two), followed by the number of this design type purchased from a specific manufacturer, then a letter indicating the manufacturer. A hyphen could separate another series of numbers and letters indicating specific configurations and special modifications to a design. Hence, the F6F was the sixth fighter (the first 'F') purchased from Grumman (the second 'F'). Interestingly, this system was similar to one used by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the time.
The National Security Act of September 18, 1947 created the U.S. Air Force as an independent service from the Army Air Forces. The new service adopted a revised designation system that set the standard for the joint-service system currently in use today. Both the new Air Force and the remaining air assets of the Army used this nomenclature. In general, this system was not particularly different from what the Army Air Forces had been using at the end of World War II, although 'F' for Fighter replaced 'P' for Pursuit. Interestingly, the 'A' for Attack category was eliminated, resulting in the Douglas A-26 Invader being redesignated B-26, duplicating the recently-retired Martin B-26 Marauder designation. One unusual aspect of this system was that some unmanned missiles were allocated numbers in the normal Fighter (F-99 BOMARC, etc.) and Bomber (B-61 Matador, etc.) sequences; these were later changed to dedicated missile designations (IM-99 BOMARC and SM-61 Matador in these examples). The Army continued to use this system until 1956 since the Air Force acted as its procurement agency when it needed to buy aircraft.
During 1956, the Army adopted a simplified aircraft designation system with only nine types (four aircraft, four helicopter, and one VTOL research), followed by a sequential design number. This is where the odd VZ-X designations associated with many early VTOL designs came from.
The Joint System
On September 18, 1962, the Department of Defense adopted a universal designation system that applied to all of the U.S. military services. In essence, this was the system the Air...
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