Still not as stupid as Operation Iraqi Liberation.

"Being held hostage" is indeed a life-threatening condition.

A life threatening condition known as "being a hostage"?

"Is the guy who names new Gatorade flavors now moonlighting at the Pentagon?" yeah but it's only hydrating while cold, in a certain lab in Utah.

Sounds like a prog-rock song title.

The guy who comes up with mission names is on vacation.

Pocket Ninja: There are openly gay people in the military now, subby. Did you seriously think that code names like this wouldn't happen? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mauve Mayhem, Pink Pony, Lavender Surprise ... get ready.

What's gay about Gatorade?

"Octave Fusion" is how they got those eight great Navy SEALS in that tiny little helicopter.

/just riffing on "octave". leave me alone.

I'd be awful at naming these things. Too literal. This one, for example, would have been called "Operation Rescue a Hostage". I just think it makes it easier to tell which op is which.

Hope they aren't thinking they need to make excuses for rescuing American hostages. I mean, I'm a soldier in Afghanistan now, but even looking at it from a civilian perspective, the portion taxes that are being paid to go to the military, that's so the military can protect you. She was just getting her money's worth.

And by the way, I'd love to be part of an operation whose name at least had some imagination to it.

I keep getting stuck with such winners along the lines of Operation: Go pick up that dude who is dying, and like, save him and stuff.

"Octave Fusion" sounds like it would be a setting in Auto-Tune.

JNowe: I'd be awful at naming these things. Too literal. This one, for example, would have been called "Operation Rescue a Hostage". I just think it makes it easier to tell which op is which.

See, I would name a precision bombing strike "Op Rescue the Hostage" just to make codenames more effective. Rescue the Hostage would be OP "LGB the building on the corner of Hurka and Durka streets."

once named an operation targeting illegal diving on protected shipwrecks Operation Holy Diver.

didn't get in trouble, but wasn't allowed to name future operations without approval from the boss.

Grave danger?

Is there another kind?

Yeah. Like I said in another thread: It's odd that a medical condition in addition to being held hostage by qat-chewing, gun-toting Somali thugs is the reason she was rescued. What, the constant threat of death, rape, torture, and death was not "life threatening" enough?

canyoneer: Yeah. Like I said in another thread: It's odd that a medical condition in addition to being held hostage by qat-chewing, gun-toting Somali thugs is the reason she was rescued. What, the constant threat of death, rape, torture, and death was not "life threatening" enough?

It's a tradeoff. The chance of the hostage dying in captivity (relatively low, since this was a for-profit kidnapping) vs the chance of the hostage being killed/accidentally shot/blown up/etc during the rescue and the chance of the mission failing.

The medical condition, the fact that they got good intel on their location after they were moved, and to be honest, timing of the State of the Union/politics is the reason they rolled the dice on a rescue attempt.

They were gonna go with Operation Use Your Illusion but decided against making two discs trips.

When we started giving operations names during World War II, they were code names that meant nothing - "Overlord-Neptune", "Shoestring", "Matterhorn", "Carpetbagger". Now they're almost always designed with marketing and PR in mind.

It sounds like a Japanese pro wrestling move.

GoBadgers: Sounds like a prog-rock song title.

Operation Brain Salad Surgery would be amazing.




Who cares if it succeeds?

Operation Wish You Were Here and Operation Thick as a Brick? Not so much.

Finally a greenlit one. This story is so bad ass

Valiente: GoBadgers: Sounds like a prog-rock song title.

Operation Brain Salad Surgery would be amazing.

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Who cares if it succeeds?

Operation Wish You Were Here and Operation Thick as a Brick? Not so much.

Operation Wango Tango?

Whoever thinks of names for Metal Gear Solid titles should strongly be considered for naming our special ops missions.

NAVY Seal Team 6: Revengeance 2: The Revengening, Part One: Vengeanciscousness.

Being a Dane I read Danish newspapers.

USA actually contacted Denmark and asked if Denmark would like their hostage rescued as well, to which Denmark answered "yeah, if you're around there anyway, also see if they have some of those funny memorabilias.".


Imagine if Denmark had said "no wai!", Team 6 comes in, kills all the hostage takers and leaves the Danish hostage all alone with 9 bodies in Somalia. That would have kinda sucked. :P

HAs anyone heard what this "life threatening condition" is exactly? this article doesn't say (unless i missed it), and I haven't heard a bit about what it is specifically. She's very young and was in Africa sweeping mines or some nonsense...how unhealthy could you be to undertake something like that?

Shouldn't a code-name be basically nonsensical? If it was operation "Rescue hostage X from bad guy Y.", that wouldn't be very subtle -- not much point for even having a code-name.

spawn73:


Imagine if Denmark had said "no wai!", Team 6 comes in, kills all the hostage takers and leaves the Danish hostage all alone with 9 bodies in Somalia. That would have kinda sucked. :P

Maybe the Dane would claim to be a berserker who pushed the bullets in by hand and the Somalis would say "whoa" and let her walk out of there.

ihatedumbpeople: HAs anyone heard what this "life threatening condition" is exactly? this article doesn't say (unless i missed it), and I haven't heard a bit about what it is specifically. She's very young and was in Africa sweeping mines or some nonsense...how unhealthy could you be to undertake something like that?

Probably something debilitating and unpleasant like dysentery or some other parasitical disease. Someone, somewhere was tired of her shiat squirting.

Worked on a corporate project in Malaysia but we didn't have a name for it.

After a self guided tour into the jungle we had our project name:
Falling Monkey....

spawn73:
USA actually contacted Denmark and asked if Denmark would like their hostage rescued as well, to which Denmark answered "yeah, if you're around there anyway, also see if they have some of those funny memorabilias.".

"US offers:

- 1 Hostage

- 1 T-shirt

- 1 Snowglobe

Denmark offers:

- 1 tin of individually sleeved sugar cookies (the big one not the medium sized one)

- 1 canned ham

Accept offer? (Y / N)"

The codenames for real covert operations don't have any meaning - they are randomly chosen from lists of words. The code names for PR operations that are supposed to be covered in the news have "sensible" names - or at least names that describe what they want people to think the purpose of the mission is.

Pronto_Breakneck: Pocket Ninja: There are openly gay people in the military now, subby. Did you seriously think that code names like this wouldn't happen? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mauve Mayhem, Pink Pony, Lavender Surprise ... get ready.

What's gay about Gatorade?

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I'm going to have a hard time un-seeing that. Thanks.

Is this the official thread for this? Or am I missing it? I would think that the successful liberation of an American hostage would have a little bit more play-time on a news aggregation website....

dr.zaeus: Pronto_Breakneck: Pocket Ninja: There are openly gay people in the military now, subby. Did you seriously think that code names like this wouldn't happen? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mauve Mayhem, Pink Pony, Lavender Surprise ... get ready.

What's gay about Gatorade?

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I'm going to have a hard time un-seeing that. Thanks.

Explains why "purple drank" would make a good porn title, though.

"Is it in you?"

GoBadgers: Valiente: GoBadgers: Sounds like a prog-rock song title.

Operation Brain Salad Surgery would be amazing.

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Who cares if it succeeds?

Operation Wish You Were Here and Operation Thick as a Brick? Not so much.

Operation Wango Tango?

Operation Wang Dang Sweet Poontang

Valiente: ihatedumbpeople: HAs anyone heard what this "life threatening condition" is exactly? this article doesn't say (unless i missed it), and I haven't heard a bit about what it is specifically. She's very young and was in Africa sweeping mines or some nonsense...how unhealthy could you be to undertake something like that?

Probably something debilitating and unpleasant like dysentery or some other parasitical disease. Someone, somewhere was tired of her shiat squirting.

Could be...but I wonder how that info got out...did they see her azz exploding via satellite?

Valiente: Probably something debilitating and unpleasant like dysentery

Operation Fecal Urgency!

(actually, that was going to be the name of my band if I ever were to be in one)

kriegsgeist: The codenames for real covert operations don't have any meaning - they are randomly chosen from lists of words. The code names for PR operations that are supposed to be covered in the news have "sensible" names - or at least names that describe what they want people to think the purpose of the mission is.

And, at least while I was on active duty, each region had a range of letter combinations they could use to name operations and exercises in their AO which limited the available options. Also, several have commented on making the names more descriptive; leaving aside the questions of operational security and code names for operations, it may be easier to remember the operation if it has a distinctive, random-ish name. Operation Hostage Rescue could describe any of a dozen ops in the last twenty years, but Operation Jelly Salad would be more memorable.

I got to test-drive the new Korg Octave Fusion at the NAMM show last week. Pretty sweet analog effects.

Badgers: "Octave Fusion" sounds like it would be a setting in Auto-Tune.

I think it sounds more like something I'd do on a piano. "Here, let me play you Bach's Oratorio in Bb minor, using my newly installed Octave Fusion pedal".

They had a plan to capture the bad guys alive? Why? We need to go back to the days of disproportionate response. You capture one of our citizens, we carpet-bomb an entire city. Behavioral studies show that of the "bad guys" who can be dissuaded, this will work. Won't work on the sociopaths who just want the world to burn though.