Question about Russian airplane names

[Alexandre Bougakov]

Hello, George,

It is the my second letter to you - the first was gone couple of minutes
ago when a small power failure occured. I have typed more than a page!!!
Maybe it is a good time to buy an UPS, or maybe FSB (Federal Security
Service) is watching me and prevents me from sending "military secrets" in
the US.... ;-)

Anyway, I will try to write it again (but now a little bit more shortly)

Russians really use the alphanumeric designations even in everyday life
when speaking about the army and other things related to it. There are no
habit to give some special "nicknames" to the aircrafts. The only
exclusions I know are "Chernaya Akula" ("Black Shark") - Ka-50 helicopter -
and Mi-24 heavy attack helicopter (or not 24, I can be mistaking) -
"Crocodile" or "Alligator", which actually looks like a crocodile's head.

People also call the fighters from the Sukhoi family (Su-25, also known as
"Grach" - "The Rook", Su-27 and Su-31) with the word "Suschka" ("Toast")

Giving names to the ground weaponry is a little bit more popular. But it
seems to me that sometimes people who develop them just open the dictionary
on the random page and choose the first word they see. Can you imagine the
american soldiers who will give the name "Buratino" ("Pinnochio") to the
heavy track-based rocket launcher? Or maybe it is so-called "military
humour" which the civilians will never understand...

The situation with the names changes since "Roswooruzhenije" began selling
high-tech weaponry to the other states (China, India, Greece, the countries
of the Latin America). High quality goods (even weaponry!) need impressive
brandnames, it is the law of marketing. These names do not spread very fast
- these words come in the everyday speech of the society from the
militaries, but since the ministery of defense doesn't buy new weaponry for
the army there are no new words to come in the lexicon. Maybe you should
ask Chinese how do they call new russian weaponry  ;-)

You can also try to use russian search engines, such as
http://www.yandex.ru (my favorite, by the way), http://www.aport.ru and
http://www.rambler.ru, or some web-catalogues, such as http://list.ru or
http://www.ru to find websites of military history clubs. Maybe people from
there will help you if you will write them. Of course, if they will not
find suspicious, that the American, "who studied Russian very long time
ago" is interested in the modern Russian weaponry...            sorry, I am
joking again...

Best,
Alexandre Bougakov <mailto:bougakov at mail.ru>
Student of the sociological faculty of the Higher School of Economics
(http://www.hse.ru), Moscow, Russian Federation
My website is http://SocioLink.narod.ru/ (thousands of sociology related
links on the Web)
My PGP key ID is 0x97F20C99, Key Fingerprint is C83C 5998 F43A BEB7 70DF
 B8FC CC5E 960E 97F2 0C99 (PGP version is 6.0.2i)

P.S. And another (maybe absolutely mad idea) - maybe you should go to the
nearest computershop and will buy an aircraft simulator game? I am not
joking - I am absolutely sure that you will find all the "nicknames",
American and Russian, there. It is not so obvious, but I think, I am right.




-----Original Message-----
From:   George Fowler [SMTP:gfowler at INDIANA.EDU]
Sent:   Wednesday, April 26, 2000 1:34 AM
To:     SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject:        Question about Russian airplane names

Greetings!

An old friend of mine (no connection to our field, though he did take
Russian in college) sent me a message asking about Russian names or
nicknames for some of their airplanes. I have the strong impression
that Russians do in fact use the alphanumeric designations even in
casual discourse, but I would be happy to be proven wrong on this. If
anyone knows of some more descriptive names, or a source to look them
up in, please email me off list. Thanks!

George Fowler

>In our modeling and simulation efforts for AFOTEC, we are periodically
called
>upon to model Russian fighter aircraft.  The NATO designations for these
are
>very well known - Fishbed for the MiG-21, Flogger for the MiG-23, Foxbat
>for the MiG-25, Fulcrum for the MiG-29, and Foxhound for the MiG-31, for
>example.
>
>Do you know what the Russians themselves call these aircraft, or do you
know
>likely sources for this information?  I've done a little Web surfing
>and so far can only come up with the NATO designations.  The Jane's
>aircraft series notes that there are factory designations for these
>aircraft (the Fulcrum-A is aircraft 9.13, for  instance, with the
>Foxbat-D called aircraft 02K).   But I have to think that they have
>actual names for these aircraft, and I'm pretty sure they only use
>the NATO names themselves when talking to Westerners.

************************************************************************
George Fowler                                [Email] gfowler at indiana.edu
Dept. of Slavic Languages        [dept. tel.] 1-812-855-9906/-2608/-2624
Ballantine 502                                [dept. fax] 1-812-855-2107
1020 E. Kirkwood Ave.                         [home tel.] 1-317-726-1482
Indiana University                             [home fax] 1-317-726-1642
Bloomington, IN 47405-7103                 [Slavica tel.] 1-812-856-4186
USA                                         [Slavica fax] 1-812-856-4187
************************************************************************


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