1980 Military Designation Protocol (Notreceau)
 | This article is incomplete because it is pending further input from participants, or it is a work-in-progress by one author. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. Note: To contribute to this article, you may need to seek help from the author(s) of this page. |
The 1980 Military Designation Protocol (Notreceauen: Protocole de désignation militaire de 1980) is a system of designation implemented to codify and standardized the naming conventions for the various weapons and equipment equipping the branches of the Notreceauen National Armed Forces. The designation system incorporated elements of previous naming and designating conventions while also implementing a proprietary system for some munitions and weapons. The 1980 MDP was first presented in the 1979 Defense White Paper at which point it was approved by the Marshal of Notreceau for full implementation the following year. Ground vehicles and aircraft were excluded from the protocol, with the system primarily focused on personal weapons and munitions.
Weapon Designations
Firearms
In keeping with traditional Notreceauen naming conventions firearms are issued with their factory designation. In this case the type of firearm is denoted with a letter or series of letters first, followed by the weapon firm of manufacture and finally the year of introduction. For example the FMAC 47 is broken down as the Fusil (F) de la Manufacture d'Armes de Châtouge (MAC) introduced in 1947 (47) or Rifle of the Châtouge Weapon Factory model 47. The one exception to this rule is the FAMAC assault rifle that was not assigned a year designator due to it being the first assault rifle to enter Notreceauen service.
Munitions
In order to better categorize the purpose and type of the ever expanding Notreceauen munitions armament, a common designation system was devised by Colonel Claude Lachance of the Department of Defense Research and Development in 1977 and implemented as a part of the protocol. Throughout its period of use it has been updated several times to account for the changing technologies present in the guidance system of weapons and as well as the shifting roles of weapon systems both new and old. The most recent update occurred in the late 90s and early 2000s with the introduction of laser guided munitions.
The system utilizes a two letter, four numeric designation scheme. The first two letters indicate if the weapon is a missile (MD), bomb (BD), rocket (RD), artillery/cannon shell (CD) or small arms munition (SD). The first number designates the launch platform; the second number designates the guidance type, the third number designates the purpose, and the final number designates the model series number of the weapon. For weapons that have multiple launch platforms, guidance types or purposes multiple designations exist depending on how the weapon is being employed for a given mission.