Non-U.S. Military Aircraft and Missile Designation Systems

Search Designation-Systems.Net
Copyright, Terms, Conditions

Last updated: 26 February 2011
(for update details, see here)

Non-U.S. Military Aircraft and Missile Designation Systems

There are a few countries, which use (or did use) formal alphanumeric designations for their military aircraft and/or missiles. For these countries, this site presents explanations of the designation systems and listings of assigned designations.

Russia and the former Soviet Union are a special case. While the Russian designations are very complex, NATO and the U.S. DoD have assigned their own designations to Soviet/Russian military equipment.

Brazil

Canada

China (PRC)

Germany and Austria-Hungary (1914-1918)

Germany (1933-1945)

Italy

Japan

Malaysia

Soviet Union/Russia
(Western Aircraft and Missile Designations)

Soviet Union/Russia
(Russian Missile and Spacecraft Designations)

Spain

Sweden

Thailand

Links

This is a short list of links to pages about non-U.S. military aviation, which include designation and/or serial number references:

Scramble on the Web - website of Scramble, magazine of the Dutch Aviation Society; includes "Order of Battle" and lots of other information on the world's air forces
ADF Serials - extensive reference to Australian military aircraft numbering system and serials
Swedish Military Aviation - everything you ever wanted to know about Sweden's military aircraft
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/d/o/dob104/aviation/uk/ - list of United Kingdom military aircraft designations
UK Military Serial Allocation - a subset of United Kingdom military aircraft serials (from XAnnn to the latest allocations)
World Air Forces - lots of information about "smaller" air forces (i.e. every country except USA, USSR/Russia, and UK!), including - if applicable - aircraft designations
Soviet and Chinese Missiles - listings of Soviet/Russian and Chinese missiles sorted by DOD designations (not all categories, though), including brief descriptions of the missiles.
United Kingdom Aerospace and Weapons Projects - large reference to military aerospace projects of the United Kingdom, sorted by name and designation

Comments and corrections to: Andreas Parsch

Go to
Designation-Systems.Net