Page 59 - Airforce Magazine_February 2016

USAF photo by TSgt. Fernando Serna
F-15s and F-16s fly over burning oil wells in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. The operation name was a throwback to more classic naming conventions.
important offensive operation of the war but it was named after a defensive position in football.
The “Menus,” named with misplaced levity, was the covert bombing of Cam- bodia in 1969-1970, a series of missions named Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack, Supper, and Dessert.
On the other hand, Operation Home- coming was just right for the airlift of the POWs from North Vietnam in 1973.
THE DRIFT TO MUSH
The planners were obviously not on a tight leash when they called the airlift to Israel in 1973 Operation Nickel Grass. It was adapted from a bawdy World War II fighter pilot ballad (“Throw a nickel in the grass. . . .”) but it was a strange choice for a mission in which the fate of an allied nation hung in the balance.
The era of freewheeling names was fast coming to a close. In 1972, the Department of Defense issued Directive 5200.1, which said that operation names must not “express a degree of bellicosity inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff implemented the guidelines in 1975 with a computer system called the Code Word, Nickname, and Exercise Terminology System, an unwieldy title shortened to NICKA, which is still in use today. The pres- ent directive says that names must not “convey connotations offensive to good taste or derogatory to a particular sect or creed” or offend US allies or “democratic free world nations.”
Contrary to popular belief, NICKA does not generate random lists of names. Mainly, it assigns two-letter alphabetic sequences to various commands and agencies, which develop two-word op- eration names beginning with a letter pair from one of the sequences. For example, NORAD and US Northern Command are assigned sequences AM through AR, FA through FF, JM through JR, and VG through VL.
Even so, assigned names do not always stick. The attempt to rescue American hostages held in Iran in 1980 was dubbed Operation Evening Light, but it will be forever remembered instead as “Desert One,” which was the refueling site where the mission was aborted when two US aircraft collided in a sandstorm.
From the NICKA letter pair UR as- signed to US Atlantic Command, a staff officer came up with Urgent Fury for the invasion of Grenada in 1983. That wasn’t exactly a reprise of Operation Killer but nevertheless aroused some press comment that it was “too militant.”
“With Operation Just Cause in 1989, code names began to be used consistently to shape public opinion,” said William M. Arkin, a journalist who has collected and analyzed more than 3,000 names of military plans, programs, and operations. The New York Times called Just Cause “Operation High Hokum.” The follow- on, Operation Promote Liberty, did not attract much attention.
DOWN FROM DESERT STORM
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, com- mander of coalition forces in the Gulf
War, is credited with naming Opera- tion Desert Storm, but that was not his first choice. He initially recommended Peninsula Shield, but that was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The second proposal, Crescent Shield, was not ac- cepted either.
Stormin’ Norman next suggested Desert Shield, which was accepted for the preparatory phase of the Gulf War. Desert Storm spun off from that. It was a throwback to the classic tradition of operation names and one of the last of its kind.
Typical of things to come was Opera- tion Productive Effort, a disaster relief mission to Bangladesh in 1991, but even the Pentagon couldn’t abide that one and renamed it Sea Angel.
Provide Comfort, 1991-1996, was humanitarian relief to the Kurds in Iraq. Provide Hope in 1992 was an airlift of food, fuel, and medicine to the former Soviet Union. That was not to be confused with Restore Hope, which was humanitarian relief for Somalia in 1993-1994.
The names for Operations Southern Watch and Northern Watch, enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq through the 1990s, were plain and literal, unencumbered by political overtones. That could not be said for Uphold Democracy, the invasion of Haiti in 1994, Deliberate Force in Bosnia in 1995, or Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999.
In 1994, the Los Angeles Times complained that “today’s military code names lack flair.” A “Pentagon strate- gist” who spoke with the reporter agreed
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