Code names are often assigned, like social security numbers, with a "code" that designates certain parameters. social security numbers have embedded with in them information on the person in question such as place and date of birth, etc. While some code names follow a pattern, after certain critical information is included in code names, the rest very often is ad hoc. Remember people, to break or make a code you first have to see a pattern. After that, its not hard to determine the meaning of a code. Case in point: When I was active at a high level in intelligence, I was told some phrase or words, that are used, get overused. Some "old stand buy" phrase like "bunny rabbit, chrome, super-dust' had been used so often it lost its meaning. The best people I ever met who worked on code names were not math experts, but experts in popular culture. Think about this. 200Years from now will we know what the words "dweeb, coca cola, or double parked" mean? It might if your a historian of culture 2 centuries from now. The ideal code has, like popular culture, an expiration date.

'codewords' like you guys are thinking of them are a thing of the past. The codewords you hear about in the media i.e. desert storm, operation iraqi liberation, bluebook blah blah blah are basically dummy names, often made up by the department/ contractor/ agency etc. etc.

Everything is done like this now

T6 ST-13

as in Task 6, Subtask 13.

Good looks Pyros!!
Some very interesting stuff that I have never seen before.
Laid out like a champ too!
Keep dropping knowledge!

With all the manuals, requirements, activites, secondary activities, advancement and physical requirements, study, training, operational and preparational work, plus all the other stuff they have to sift through, it's a wonder they can specialize or be proficient in all the things they must. I mean look all that material. Almost everything in government is like that, which is why I find it hard to believe that any one person or group could be in overall direct control of anything. I think it's a hierachy without a pinnacle. Not even a King or dictator and the whole of their Parliament or whatever could keep up with all the stuff that's out there, plus weed through good from bad sources, and know how to tell which is which. They could create programs to do all sorts of things and unless they're challenged by their friends in high or low places, they'd get away with it. Think about it. Start a project and call it EAGLE TREE then write it up as a Green Scrub Cloth supply aquisition and distribution project, when really you're aquiring cocaine with false Green Scrub Cloth reciepts. Mark the Project as a sub project within a highly classified Operation. Then once you've got money from the mobsters in Congress to buy your Cocaine/ Green Scrub Cloths, close the file and have all records shredded and destroyed, claiming your conserving space and recycling by disposing of obsolete non functional Project records. And because it's buried in a vastly organized, highly classified Operational structure, all the more it'll be overlooked by others who have more on their minds than Green Scrub Cloths and whether they were ever really bought and distributed. If they need some they'll just have more ordered. Then one would have to wonder how many other false, empty, or misleading programs are out there sucking up the Treasury of unnaccounted for funds. There'd be no way to confirm it once enough time has passed after the Project records are destroyed and the Green Scrub Cloths presumably used up and thrown away with no real accountability, logs, or oversight by anyone.

The potential uses of CODE WORDS is really quite inspiring. I know I'm being ridiculous here, but, good find.

not to sound like an asshole, but being military and having codenames leaked like this...

it puts not only my life at risk.....but everyone else that I fight withs life at risk....

I completely understand your search for knowledge about the military....i am always trying to find out more (hence me being part of ats), but when it comes down to it...

you put human lives at risk when you make it public like this....

I found this thread, and a few others, by google....

what's to say that a terrorist won't, or most likely hasn't already, found it?

just a thought....

All of those are out dated.



Military code words/names change faster than these internet junkies can get their hands on it.


Trust me, I know its annoying trying to keep up with it so I stopped and im AFSOC




-afsoc

i mean if that was the case i understand yes

Excellent read... lots of great information to help understand the complex use of code words. S + F

walrus

Are you kidding me? That "reference" manual is not only outdated and replaced it has nothing to do with this made at home site. That is so far of base I am still laughing. If the "process" of making code names was classified how would that site be active after so long. Come on seriously. There are also no code names on there, those are unclassified acronyms. Hate to burst your bubble but code names work very simply. We have this little plastic box, called a computer. Then this fancy dancy book, the dictionary, there is a button and you push it. It gives you to random words to make a code name, or adds a word to the term "operation" and blammo, you got a code name. I know, sounds stupid, and you really want it to be some amazing classified process, but the military doesn't have the time to sit around and pay people to waste time. By the way if that was even a remotely official site it was have one of the two authorized fonts for the military... that was really the big give away.

The link is a bit silly looking I admit and I rarely believe the 'my friend did this' thing but at least one of the code words on that age is still used today

Red Flag...Thunder in Nellis baby!!

-Kyo

As some people have said, most of these are way outdated, and the ones that aren't (Guardrail is a good example) are so commonly used and pedestrian that I'm not even sure they're classified anymore.

We need to talk. Send the guys or someone to pick me up.
R.S.O.

[edit on 21-10-2009 by erasedhistory]

link is very well put together

Very handy link. Thank you.

In 1970 the CIA had numerous classified projects active worldwide under the codename MK Ultra. By 1976 MK Ultra had given birth to MK Ultra II, MK Ultra III and something relative known at the time as the door mouse contest.
In October of 1978 I was stationed in northern Brazil. An operative of our outfit was a remote player of the MK III group and was conducting experiments with an unnamed research company in Guyana at that time. The nature of these experiments was unknown to me, however in January of 1978 I was informed that he was leaving us, and that MK Ultra III was to have no further presence in that area. I was told that the majority of MK III resources were being poured into the New England region and reconstituting as a unified intelligence company called Operation Blizzard Green. Oddly enough this was one month before the infamous blizzard of '78 which took countless lives in the northeast united states the following month.
By June of 1978 I had been reallocated to Boston Massachusetts. In late June or early July I ran into the same operative at a mass debriefing. He had very little to say about what he had been doing in that span of months,
except to say that MK Ultra was a dead subject. I never asked about operation blizzard green, though a superior had a told me upon my arrival to Boston that blizzard green was still active and operatives involved in the project were being referred to as Casserole Masters by most other groups in the area.
Of all the top secret code names I had ever encountered, the casserole masters made the least amount of sense to me personally. Especially considering the context within which they operated.