"Operation Secure Tomorrow"

Nation-building in Haiti now has a name, with Operation Fluffy Bunnies evidently on reserve for security-ops associated with the White House Easter-egg roll.

Seriously, what ever happened to non-PR names for military ops? Torch, Overlord, Market Garden, Linebacker Two -- those were operations. Not ad campaigns.

BTW, what did 330 Chileans ever do to get sent to Haiti to Secure Tomorrow?

Comments

[Jean Bart]

PARIS - France?s state-run SNCF railway found a bomb half-buried on the main line between Paris and the Swiss city of Basle Wednesday, just two weeks after the Madrid train bombings.

Foiled again!!!!!

[dude]

The names for military ops used to be code names. So they'd pick something vague yet cool-sounding like "D-Day" to keep the spies guessing. Now the names of military ops are purely an exercise in PR, so they pick vaguely inspirational stuff like "Enduring Justice" and "Infinite Freedom" and so forth.

If memory serves me right, this started with the invasion of Grenada. They were going to call it "Operation Blue Ball" but that got nixed by the White House and it became "Operation Urgent Fury". (Which surely pegged some Cheez-O-Meter somewhere).

The best though was the invasion of Panama - "Operation Just Cause" which was quickly deemed "Operation Just Because".

[peachy]

Actually, d-day was a general operational term - the day that an operation commenced (just as h-hour was the start hour) - which has become conflated in popular history with a particular operation though it was widely used throughout the war. The overall codeword for the invasion of France was 'Overlord', though the various subsidiary operations had their own names. The landing itself, including naval support and the preliminary airborne assaults, was Operation 'Neptune', which continued until the end of June.

I agree, though, that the new names are just terrible, though presumably they don't compromise operational security (who's really interested in stopping the US from landing in Haiti, after all?)

[Jim Walsh]

Whatever happened to code names that sounded like they were designed to strike fear into the hearts of the bad guys?(e.g. "Downfall," "Rolling Thunder," etc.)
Proposal: Operation: I'm-A-Gonna-Get-Mideval-On-Yo-Ass...

[Andrew]

Foiling attacks is good! (Will Azner get some credit, re the ETA?)

The nation that has the most apparent success in "foiling" is Saudi Arabia. When it comes to protecting their own assets (asses?) they appear to be able to develop all kinds of intellegence...while the rest of the time they draw a blank.

[Andrew]

"Foiling" aside, I don't see why anybody has a problem with this. I don't get it.

[JC]

Haiti - How about -- Operation Septic Service

[JC]

Haiti - How about -- Operation Septic Service

[J. Alexander Lowman]

I like "Enduring Justice" too. Is that like, "we're enduring justice until we can finally take over completely and impose martial law", or is it, "we're making sure that justice endures in the world"?

Probably the former. 🙂

[Jean Bart]

Andrew,

Well, the two groups making threats against the French railway system are Islamic in nature; so I don't see why Aznar gets any credit (indeed, the first bomb was found prior to 11-M).

The Saudis have lost quite a few people in the last year to terrorism.

BTW, I don't believe France is so much of a target because of the headscarves, but due to detentions and aggressive policing (about 450 people since 2000) and monitoring (overt and covert) of Mosques and Islamic community centers in France. I think this is really starting to piss these bastards off.

[Andrew]

JB

Meant...does Azner get credit for foiling previous ETA attempts in Spain. I hope the ETA doesn't evolve to a quasi-respectability, like the IRA.

[OldFan]

Long ago, the names for operations were taken from random lists of words by the planners. This was done to provide Operational Security [OPSEC], i.e. keep the enemy from guessing which operation was the annual picnic and which was the invasion of Europe. The same procedure was used to assign radio call signs in the pre-SINGARS [un-encrypted] days. That's how I became "Impeach Sailfish 26" back in '73.

It is pretty cheesy to name operations for PR value, but it is hard to resist the urge to be creative. I myself would prefer "Underwear-filling Rain of Flaming Death", "Feel the Wrath of our Free Market" or "Forth Eorlingas"

[Pavel]

In the immortal words of Chester Cheetoh, "that's dangerously cheezy."

[mfc]

For those interested, the following 1995 article from Parameters, the US Army War College quarterly, gives a pretty thorough breakdown of naming operations:
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1995/sieminsk.htm

[dj of raleigh]

I don't believe that Frenchmen, with their national bond,
would terrorize their own people in any way.
That happens in the diverse US, but please not France.
We need a topic going on France and internal security.
It's that train link and time proximity that hits hard.

[Douglas Fletcher]

So who does the French government think planted the bomb?

[Ruthless]

Lewis Carroll thought this one up.

Security tomorrow. Security yesterday. Never security today.

[Jean Bart]

Douglas Fletcher,

Well, the likely suspects are either "AZF" (which just suspended their "campaign") or another new group, which has a long name that I have forgotten (it is something like "The Hand of the Most Merciful And Terrible God" or something equally stupid). In all likelihood, its one variant of Muslim terrorists or another.

[Isaac Bartram]

I just heard on the radio that the French train bomb planters had demanded a $6M ransom. Could be this is just plain mercenary thuggery rather than political thuggery.

[Paul in Saudi]

I am the self-appointed World's Leading Authority on military codenames. If you have a question on this shoot me a question.

From my book, copyright me......

?D Day? The term used in planning for an as yet unspecified date on which military operations will begin. The time operations will begin is called ?H Hour.? The first use of this term seems to have been in an operations order issued on 7 September 1918 by the American Expeditionary Force in France. The ?D Day? designation is so convenient in military planning that its use has become universal. The most famous ?D Day? is 6 June 1944 when the Allies invaded Normandy (OVERLORD). In the post-war era, to avoid confusion with the OVERLORD invasion, some military operations have avoided the ?D Day? designation. The Allied invasion of Iraq and Kuwait began on ?G Day.?