Equipment Guides

Every Chinese missile carries up to three names: a PLA designation (DF-21), a US/NATO reporting name (CSS-5) and often an export label (M-9, C-802). This guide decodes the designation system, maps each family's lineage from the Soviet transfers of the 1950s to today's hypersonic weapons, and links every missile to its full specification page.

Every Chinese warship class carries up to three names: a Type number (Type 055), a NATO reporting name (Renhai) and a lead-ship class name (Nanchang class). This guide decodes the numbering system, maps the destroyer and submarine lineages, and links every class to its full specification page.

A drone designation is a sentence: MQ-9 reads "multi-mission unmanned aircraft, ninth design". This guide decodes the MQ/RQ lettering and its experimental prefixes, follows the line from Vietnam-era target drones to the Predator dynasty and today's fighter-like Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and links every drone to its full specification page.

Every Russian missile carries up to three names: an industrial GRAU index (9K720), a design name (Iskander) and a NATO reporting name (SS-26 Stone). This guide decodes all three systems, maps the strategic, cruise, anti-ship and air-defense families from the early Cold War to the hypersonic claims of the 2020s, and links every missile to its full specification page.

Nearly every French fighter for seventy years has come from one company. This guide decodes the Dassault names — Ouragan, Mystère, Mirage, Rafale — and the Mirage variant grammar, follows the single line of descent from the first French jet to the omnirole Rafale, and links every aircraft to its full specification page.

Fagot, Fishbed, Flanker, Felon: for seventy years NATO has catalogued Soviet and Russian fighters under F-names while the design bureaus — MiG, Sukhoi, Yakovlev — fought their own duel. This guide decodes both naming systems, follows each bureau's line from the Great Patriotic War to the Su-57, and links every aircraft to its full specification page.

Iranian missiles carry names from scripture and the Iran–Iraq war, not a designation system. This guide sorts the arsenal into its real lineages — Scud, Nodong and Musudan heritage on the liquid side, the indigenous Fateh and Sejjil lines on the solid side — separates claimed from demonstrated ranges, and links every missile to its full specification page.

Chinese combat aircraft are named by a one-syllable mission prefix — J for fighter, H for bomber, Q for attack — and their history is a single arc: three decades of building Soviet designs, three of copying them without help, and two of building things nobody else flies. This guide decodes the designations, maps what copies what, and links every aircraft to its full specification page.

Fulcrum, Bear, Felon: the code names NATO assigns to Soviet, Russian and Chinese aircraft — the first letter gives the role, the syllable count the engine type — matched to the real designation of every aircraft on file.

AA-11 Archer, SS-18 Satan: every NATO and US DoD missile designation on file, with the prefix grammar that encodes launcher and target before the name is even read.

From Whiskey to Akula to the Chinese dynasties: how NATO names the submarine classes it tracks, matched to the real project designations behind them.