List of military electronics of the United States

Last updated

This article lists American military electronic instruments/systems along with brief descriptions. This stand-alone list specifically identifies electronic devices which are assigned designations (names) according to the Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS) beginning with the AN/ prefix. They are grouped below by the first designation letter following this prefix. The list is organized as sorted tables that reflect the purpose, uses and manufacturers of each listed item.

Contents

JETDS nomenclature

All electronic equipment and systems intended for use by the US military are designated using the JETDS system. The beginning of the designation for equipment/systems always begins with AN/, which only signifies that the device has a JETDS-based designation (or name). When the JETDS was originally introduced as the unclassified Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System (JAN), AN represented all Army-Navy electronic equipment. Later, the naming method was adopted by all Department of Defense branches, and others like Australia, Canada, NATO and more.

The first letter of the designation following AN/ indicates the installation or platform where the device is used (e.g. A for piloted aircraft). That means a device with a designation beginning "AN/Axx" would typically be installed in a piloted aircraft or used to support that aircraft. The second letter indicates the type of equipment (e.g. A for invisible light). So, AN/AAx would designate a device used for piloted aircraft with invisible light (like infrared or ultraviolet light) sensing capability. The third letter designates the purpose of the device (e.g. R for receiver, or T for transmitter). After the letters that signify those things, a dash character ("-") is followed by a sequential number that represents the next design for that device. Thus as one example, AN/ALR-20 would represent: [1]

So, the full description should be interpreted as the 20th design of an Army-Navy (or all Department of Defense) electronic device for a countermeasures signal receiver.

Due to the enormous number of United States and allied military electronic systems using the JETDS naming convention, the list has been split into two sublists. To ease navigation, below is a list of direct links to various tables in each sublist. The sublists are:

NOTE: Letters E, H, I, J, L, N, O, Q, R, X and Y are not used in the first-position of JETDS nomenclatures.

AN/:

A – Piloted aircraft systems

B – Submarine-based systems

C – Cryptographic (previously air transportable or cargo) systems

D – Pilotless carrier systems

F – Fixed (not moving) systems

G – Ground-based systems

M – Mobile systems

P – Portable systems

S – Water (surface ship or buoys) systems

T – Transportable systems

U – Utility systems

V – Vehicular systems

W – Water Surface and Underwater combined systems

Z – Piloted/Pilotless airborne vehicle systems

See also

Lists

References

  1. ↑ Sterk, Richard (22 January 2024). "U.S. Military AN Nomenclature Made Easy". Defense and Security Monitor (Article). Retrieved 5 August 2025.

Bibliography

The following reference material applies to both of the sub-list articles, and is listed here for continuity and context:

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.