What’s in a name?

Ars is first to reveal how the Space Force will name its weapon systems.

In this photo, military data relay satellites built by York Space Systems are prepared for launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: York Space Systems

A little more than a century ago, the US Army Air Service came up with a scheme for naming the military’s multiplying fleet of airplanes.

The 1924 aircraft designation code produced memorable names like the B-17, A-26, B-29, and P-51—B for bomber, A for attack, and P for pursuit—during World War II. The military later changed the prefix for pursuit aircraft to F for fighter, leading to recognizable modern names like the F-15 and F-16.

Now, the newest branch of the military is carving its own path with a new document outlining how the Space Force, which can trace its lineage back to the Army Air Service, will name and designate its “weapon systems” on the ground and in orbit. Ars obtained a copy of the document, first written in 2023 and amended in 2024.

The changes could ultimately lead to the retirement, or at least the de-emphasis, of bulky bureaucratic acronyms. You might think of it as similar to how the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter program evolved into the F-35 Lightning II.

The memorandum outlining the Space Force’s new nomenclature was signed in 2023 by then-Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, who was the branch’s chief strategy and resource officer at the time. Bratton is now a four-star general serving as vice chief of space operations, the No. 2 uniformed position in the Space Force.

The document, titled Space Force Instruction 16-403, covers “Space Force weapon system naming and designations.” It provides guidance for creating new designators. The Space Force says compliance with the instruction is mandatory for new programs, but it does not require an update for existing satellites.

“All new weapon systems developed after the effective date of this instruction will require a designator,” the memorandum says. The new names will have letters identifying each system’s purpose and orbital regime, followed by numbers or letters describing its design number and design series.

Shawn Bratton, then a two-star general, gives remarks as the featured speaker for the 38th Space Symposium Satellite Forum Breakfast in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 19, 2023. Credit: US Space Force/Ethan Johnson

John Shaw, a retired Space Force lieutenant-general, was part of internal discussions about revamping the military satellite naming scheme several years ago.

“We were looking at this in 2018, before we had a Space Force, and trying to fit it into the Air Force nomenclature,” Shaw told Ars. “And it sort of hit a dead end because the Air Force just wasn’t set up well for this. You really needed to start over. That wasn’t going to happen very easily. Now that we have a Space Force, we can start over… I’m glad to see that it’s becoming reality.”

Reforming the Byzantine

Many US military missions are currently known by several names. They can be confusing to anyone who isn’t steeped in Pentagon nomenclature.

Let’s use one mission to illustrate this problem. In 2022, the Space Force launched the sixth in a series of satellites built for the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP). The satellite was known as GSSAP 6 before its launch. Once in orbit, the Space Force catalogued the spacecraft as USA-325, in keeping with the military’s sequential numbering scheme for national security satellites.

What’s more, the Space Force’s launch directorate designated the mission as USSF-8. These USSF numbers are generic descriptors for any rocket launch carrying Space Force-owned national security payloads.

So, why add another designation to the Pentagon’s Rolodex of satellite names? If used transparently, the nomenclature might provide clarity on which satellites are doing what missions. But this hasn’t always been the case for the military. For example, the Air Force used a fighter plane designation for the F-117 Nighthawk, when in reality, it was a stealth aircraft designed for ground attacks.

“I love the idea of getting a nomenclature,” said Shaw, whose final post before retirement was deputy commander of US Space Command. “I’m on record saying I don’t like the acronym GSSAP. It’s a horrible acronym. Even the word SAP (an acronym for highly classified Special Access Programs) makes it sound like it’s super secret.”

The military’s GSSAP satellites roam geosynchronous orbit, a ring more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. In this orbit, satellites move around the Earth at the same rate as the planet’s rotation, giving them persistent views of entire continents.

Potential adversaries like China and Russia—along with the United States itself—position spy satellites, early warning platforms, and perhaps soon will place defensive and offensive weapons in geosynchronous orbit. The GSSAP satellites maneuver around geosynchronous orbit with cameras and sensors to see what other satellites are doing.

A Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) missile warning satellite is offloaded from a C-5M Super Galaxy cargo plane after delivery to its launch site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Most programs using the new naming scheme will have two letters, first describing the basic mission, and then its operating environment. The list is illustrative of the kinds of satellites the Space Force operates today or foresees deploying in the coming years. According to the Space Force memorandum, the basic mission designations are:

• A for Attack: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to attack enemy forces or equipment.
• B for Battle Management: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to direct and control friendly forces tactically engaged with an adversary.
• C for Communications: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to support communication or data transport activities.
• D for Defend: Systems, platforms, or vehicles that can protect friendly forces.
• E for Electromagnetic Warfare: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to attack, protect, or exploit signals in the electromagnetic spectrum.
• K for Support: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to ensure maintainability of space missions or payloads, including activities such as hosting, deploying, maintaining, sustaining, or servicing space vehicles or payloads while in orbit.
• M for Meteorological: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to observe, record, or relay meteorological and oceanographic data.
• N for Navigation Warfare: Systems, platforms, or vehicles that conduct navigation, positioning, and timing or navigation warfare activities.
• P for Pursuit: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to intercept space targets in support of offensive and defensive operations.
• R for Reconnaissance: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed to perform targeted collection of intelligence and/or threat indications and warning to answer specific military questions.
• S for Surveillance: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed for persistent collection of intelligence and/or threat indications and warning on a target within a terrestrial, orbital, or cyber battlespace.
• W for Warning and Tracking: Systems, platforms, or vehicles designed for the systematic observation of aerospace for the purpose of detecting, tracking, and characterizing terrestrial, air, and missile threats.

The second letter in the prefix will describe where the Space Force system will reside:

• C for Cyberspace Domain: A domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.
• D for Deep Space: Deep space is any orbit beyond the cislunar regime.
• G for Geosynchronous/stationary Orbit (GEO): An orbit synchronized to the Earth’s rotation, orbiting at the same rate at which the Earth rotates upon its axis. Satellites in this orbit have an altitude of approximately 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface and create a figure eight ground trace over the ground. This designator includes Geosynchronous or Geostationary as the key point of reference to describe their main mission orbital regime.
• H for Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO): A non-circular orbit with eccentricity greater than .2 that extends into other orbital regimes. Two common examples of this regime are the Tundra and Molniya orbits, both of which have low perigee (LEO altitude) and a high apogee (GEO altitude).
• L for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO): Orbits that are at a height of approximately 2,000 km or less above the surface of the Earth and average time to orbit the earth of approximately 90-100 minutes.
• M for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO): A roughly circular orbit between low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit (approximately between 2,000 and 36,000 km).
• T for Terrestrial: Systems, platforms, vehicles with this designator are designed to enable effects within the space domain, but conduct operations within the land, air, and maritime domain.
• V for Various: Systems, platforms, vehicles with this designator are designed to operate across multiple orbital regimes or domains. Space vehicles with this nomenclature can either move between multiple orbits or can be the identical platform located at various orbits.

The Space Force also outlines optional modifiers to be placed before the required two-letter prefix. A test, experimental, prototype, or scientific and calibration version of a Space Force system would be preceded by the letters T, X, Y, or Z, respectively.

Some examples

So, the 12th missile warning satellite in a future series located in a highly elliptical orbit might be named WH-12. A future satellite in the GPS IIIF series in medium-Earth orbit might be designated NM-10F. And the 16th in a series of ground-based Bounty Hunter antennas designed to detect sources of radio interference affecting US military satellites could be called ET-16.

The Space Force’s replacement program for the GSSAP reconnaissance constellation is the first to publicly use the new designation guidelines. Military officials have previously disclosed the new program’s name, RG-XX, but its meaning has withstood scrutiny. It turns out, RG reveals that the next-generation satellites will perform a reconnaissance mission in geosynchronous orbit. The XX is a placeholder for a numbered series. Presumably, the first in the line will be named RG-01.

Artist’s concept of an Astroscale servicing satellite that will demonstrate orbital refueling for the US Space Force. Credit: Astroscale

The RG-XX satellites will differ from the existing GSSAP platforms in a couple of important ways. First, the new RG-XX platforms will be refuelable in space, overcoming the GSSAP satellites’ limitations of a finite fuel supply, something that has troubled military commanders who would like to steer the satellites through space without worrying about running out of propellant. Second, the Space Force intends to buy the new recon satellites from multiple manufacturers, adding a layer of competition that officials hope will lower costs and yield a larger fleet in orbit.

Shaw, a longtime proponent of in-orbit refueling, said he was happy to see the Space Force taking this approach.

“It’s significant because that’s really the first time that the Space Force has said we want an operational platform to be refuelable,” Shaw said. “They haven’t talked about how they’re going to refuel it and who’s going to be a refueler. Everything else has been R&D or demos up to this point, but it’s a significant first step.”

The Space Force also signaled its openness to accommodating “popular names” to go along with the official designations, similar to the F-16 fighter jet, which is known as the Fighting Falcon, and the F/A-18 is the Hornet. “Names must be brief,” the Space Force instruction says. “Use no more than two short words. Choose a name that characterizes the mission and operational capabilities of the weapon system.”

The nickname should not infringe on any known brand names, trademarks, or copyrights, and must be “within the scope of DoD values and morals.”

The GSSAP and RG-XX satellites must have exceptionally good vision to get a good look at other objects suspended in the blackness of space, a reminder of a nocturnal bird of prey that flies much closer to the ground.

“Hopefully, this thing will get called the RG-XX ‘Owl’ or something like that,” Shaw said.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.