[Milsurplus] [ARC5] Dual Inspections

[Mike Morrow]

Jack wrote:

>"Army-Navy Nomenclature System can be recognized by the slant bar
>in the type designations. The asterisk (*) prefix to type designations
>indicates standardization between either Army or Navy and other United
>Nations."

That's it exactly.  I believe it was an early (now abandoned) attempt
to indicate that the equipment nomenclature for a particular item had
been standardized not only for U.S. force use, but also for some allied
foreign services as well.

I think it was intended to standardize among interested parties a
nomenclature that was to be used by all.  That would eliminate having,
for example, both U.S. and UK nomenclature for an item (as occurred
on stuff like the SCR-522-A and the T-47A/ART-13).

In the manuals for many late WWII-era JAN sets, there will be a note
somewhere stating that the star that appears before a component 
(example: *RE-1/ARR-1) is part of the equipment nomenclature, and the
text will go to some pains to include it every place that the component
is listed.

The current JAN system standard can be found many places:

http://ed-thelen.org/MIL-STD-196E.pdf

It contains no reference to this early star designator.  But on page
44 it does explain current use of the JAN system among allied countries
like the UK and Canada.  (You'll see why a Canadian variant of the
AN/PRC-10 was known as the AN/PRC-510.)

Mike / KK5F