Understanding the Military "M" designations

You shouldn't even get started on aircraft.
As time goes by, they add more and more complications and "exceptions to the rules."

Things are supposed to be simple, allowing up to 3 primary mission designators before the design number. (with the possibility of a leading 4th designator for special aircraft - experimental, displays, etc.) Then, capped off by the variant/series.

Sometimes aircraft follow suit properly:
F-15E
-Fighter, design 15, variant E
KC-135
-Tanker, Transport, design 135, variant A

But others play "outside the box".
Example of one that was/is truly messed up:
MH-53M(J)
-Multi-Mission - indicating that the aircraft has multiple missions AND is no longer used for its original mission.
-Helicopter
-design 53
-variant M
-upgraded to 'M' from a 'J' variant that had previously been modified from an MH-53H variant (which would have previously been a C variant :rolleyes:) -- This is not an official 'approved' method for aircraft designation. Yet, it was used until 2008.
Without the (J), it indicated that it was upgraded/modified from an 'J' variant that had never been an MH-53H variant; but upgraded directly from an HH-53C. This was important to mission and mobility planning, because the aircraft were slightly different, mechanically, based on the variant they were upgraded from.

But, an experimental upgrade on top of the 'M' variant of that helicopter would have resulted in another stupid designation. Since only the modification/upgrade was experimental (electronics), and not the basic aircraft, the experimental designation did not include the 'Y' mission assignment. Instead, they did this:
MH-53M(+) {read as "emm plus")
or
MH-53M+
-the '(+)' indicated it was a 'H'-to-'J' variant, upgraded to 'M' status, and further upgraded to 'M+'.
-the '+' indicated it was never an 'H' variant, before upgrading 'J'-to-'M', and then to 'M+'.

To complicate that designation further, the Air Force approved letting that 'M+' go "live" as the official designation of the upgraded aircraft. So, the previous differentiation of slight mechanical differences would be lost in the new designation.
Unfortunately for tax payers, the entire 'J', 'M', and 'M+' fleet was retired before the 'M+' upgrade made it to the real world. With the fleet's retirement, the (J) differentiation went away.
Now, quite a few of the former 'M(J)'s are in museums, due to their rather colorful and eventful histories. ;)

Did I mention there were also 'J' variants that had sub-designations to indicate whether they had originally been a 'B' or 'C' variant? Nah... I won't get into that.... :D
 
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Scorch- Sometimes, I believe the Y was used for 'Consolidated Use" or 'Consolidated Origin" -as in the old PBY Catalina which has a neat history of being pushed into enough rolls to give it nearly the whole alphabet if such use would have been given prior approval by whoever it was that done such things as approvals.
 
On the aircraft. Like I said, they are different.

The Air Force has its origins in the Army Air Force. It didn't take long for the aviators to want to be their own service. Part of that campaign was arguing that the rest of the Army wasn't suited to run the aviation portion.

They separated themselves in every way they could. One of those ways was to use a different designation for aircraft than for other Army major end items. The alphabetical designations explained above pre-date the creation of the Air Force.

Once the seperation was accomplished, the new service was given the responsibility of procuring all aircraft - including the unarmed aircraft that the Army was permitted to have at the time. So, the designations stuck and are still used.

And, of course, aviators still consider themselves to be different.
 
One theory is that the army stopped giving model numbers as the year of adoption because you didn't want anyone thinking they had something old, although it doesn't seem to bother anyone who likes .45 autos. That's what they used to be called, you know. However, the year of adoption continued to be used in some cases, though not for firearms. There was the 1956 model webgear and the 1952 field jacket and so on. In some cases model numbers seem to be applied retroactively.

A similiar thought process seemed to be at work when Winchester quit calling it a Model 1894 and using just Model 94 instead. But I've suspected the Model 88 had more to do with the Model 99 Savage (formerly the Model 1899!). Someone just had to come up with a Model 77, too, didn't they?

I think US Army rifles were officially, "U.S. Rifle, M14," etc.
 
I've never seen a regulation US government rifle marked "M-1" or "M-16" or "M-14" so therefore if anybody has one, they are probably counterfeits. Real ones don't have that "-" between the letter and number. On the other hand, a friend's been looking for a Garand marked "M-1" for his collection and has never seen one. So maybe there are no counterfeits
 
And that's why your maintainers hate you.
Click to expand...
Nah! We never hated pilots, it was always more like how you treat your spoiled cousins. You have to play with them becasue Mom said so, but you don't have to like them.

Besides, crew members get to tell the pilots where to put it. We didn't didn't call them "zeros" for nothing, you know.;)
 
You shouldn't even get started on aircraft.

"As time goes by, they add more and more complications and exceptions to the rules."

And up until 1962 the Navy had a totally different designation system...


"maintainers"?

Those are called RAMP RATS...:D

T.
 
A Russian, writing many years ago, expressed confusion as to why the US Army tended to give the same designations to so many things. He believed it surely led to serious confusion. How many things were "M-1 (or M1)," for example? However, he mentioned that calibers had so much overlap. How many things were 75mm? Personally, I suspect he may have been overstating a point, since the Soviets used at least three different small arms cartridges that were .30 caliber or 7.62mm.

I believe I have mentioned before that while there are advantages to standardization and simplification in ammunition, it was theoretically possible early in WWII for a British light tank to require five different small arms ammunition. Some early tanks had a 15mm and a 7.92mm Besa guns, .38-200 for the crew's revolvers, probably .45 ACP for the Thompson they probably had and if there was an extermally mounted Bren, .303. But they probably didn't have a Bren and they probably rarely used their revolvers.
 
Join the Army, enjoy the life for 20 years...you'll know a TON of designations by then and have good retirement benefits!!

Besides, its awfully fun to get paid to fire full-auto firearms & blow up stuff!!
I heartily recommend Mechanized Infantry Battalions...its almost like RV camping!! :rolleyes:
(yes, I'm a cruel rascal, comes from having been an 11-M...hehehe)
 
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