mission naming

[overkill01]

Maybe some stupid question but i'm no expert and I often wonder.

How are individual missions (patrol, strike, ... ) named in real military operations?
Any info on that ?

[Klahn]

In the USAF, we used an Air Tasking Order to schedule the day's missions. A new ATO was generated every 24 hours. The ATO identified the callsigns to be used for aircraft assigned to that particular mission. There are names for mission types, (like CAS for Close Air Support.) But a specific mission is simply labeled with a number identifier.

The ATO is a large document that plans out the missions for a whole theater of operations.

So part of an ATO could look like this:
(shamelessly stolen from someone's website)

TSKCNTRY/US//
SVCTASK/F//
TASKUNIT/366 FIGHTER WING/ICAO:KMUO//
AMSNDAT/0163/-/ALPHA/-/ESC/-/-/DEPLOC:KMUO/ARRLOC:KMUO//
MSNACFT/2/OTHAC:F16CJ/DART02/HARM/-/100/20163/30163//
PKGCMD/ALPHA/493 FIGHTER SQUADRON/0155/EAGLE55//
GTGTLOC/P/-/NET:120900AFEB/NLT:120910A/ENEMY SPECIAL FORCES UNIT
/ID:DEMIZ00001/UNIT/TANKER/DMPID:362000.7N1162700.7W/WGS 1984/-/-/1//
ASUPTFOR/ATK/493 FIGHTER SQUADRON/0155//
6ROUTE
/PN/ROUTEPT /TYP/ATIME /TAS /ALT
/ 1/3804N11720W /STP/- / -/ 0
/ 2/3620N11627W /TGT/120900A/ -/ 0
/ 3/3704N11602W /RP /- / -/ 0//
ESCDATA/02/ACTYP:F15E/EAGLE55/PFREQ:357.0/SFREQ:303.0//

In this case, we are looking at an escort tasking for 2 F-16CJs (Callsign Dart02) to escort 2 F-15Es (Callsign Eagle55.) The F-16 mission is "0163" and the F-15 mission is "0155". The callsign of this strike package is "Alpha." That means "Alpha" refers to both the attack aircraft, and their escorts.

Mind you, this is an old ATO format, and they change them every couple of years.

[overkill01]

Interesting, thank you for taking the time.

[SeaQueen]

So part of an ATO could look like this:

blah blah blah...

Dude, just download the spreadsheet!