Andreas Parsch's

Military Aircraft and Missile Designation Systems Pages

Copyright © 2001-2005 Andreas Parsch

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

Germany World War II

Germany & Austria-Hungary 1918

Italy

Japan

Malaysia

Russia/USSR

US Index

Spain

Sweden

 

Links

This is a short list of links to pages about non-US 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.

 

Comments and corrections to: Andreas Parsch