How military operations get their code names (2011) | Hacker News Reader

How military operations get their code names (2011)

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41 pointshooboy19 comments

It is far more casual than anyone like to admit. Lots of jokes get through, little rebellions by junior officers tasked with inventing names. A classic example was "Operation Iraqi Liberation", an early name for the invasion of Iraq. Another may be an early program whereby ai/software selected targets for future strikes over Afghanistan: Skynet.

Operation Enduring Freedom was a classic — to endure, to suffer.

OPERATION ENDURING OUR FREEDOM IS IN THE HOUSE!

The FBI has fun with this, too. They named the investigation into rich parents buying their dumb kids into fancy universities "Operation Varsity Blues."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139699/

And "Operation: Fast and Furious".

Also "Operation Jackpot" which was a bust of more than 100 pot smugglers in the early 80's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jackpot_(drug_invest...

The book on the "Gentlemen Smugglers" and how they got busted is a good read.

Asin: B00MJD6JY2

Sorry - what is the joke in "Operation Iraqi Liberation"?

OIL being a comment on the real motivation for the operation.

Haha, I see! Good one.

This says nothing about HOW which, after all is the title of the article

As someone who has named operations I can tell you how it works

It's pretty random and whoever says the first thing that sounds good usually goes. That said, at least one shop I worked in had a consistent theme with naming ops but that was about it.

What, you didn't MDMP the name (along with all other minutiae) to death?

Oh, that's certainly been done before

Usually not though

...names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called "Bunnyhug" or "Ballyhoo."

Ironically an anime that also released in 2011 called Steins;Gate has operations with crazy names. When it’s revealed what the criteria for the names are, it boiled down to “made up whatever sounded cool”

I find this very interesting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_color-coded_war_...

Germans did that too. Invasion of Poland, (whose anniversary is today) was Case White. Case Yellow was the invasion of France, etc...

Mountain Thrust. Just say that like a normal Texan.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Code of which the cancelled Black Arrow rocket programme might be the most famous.

I've never been able to find a source for it but I heard that apparently the German's in WW2 had a plan called "Operation suicide plan"

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