NATO Reporting Names for Submarines
During the Cold War, NATO assigned reporting names to classes of Soviet submarines which were typically taken from the NATO phonetic alphabet. For example, submarine classes were given names such as "Delta" and "Foxtrot." When there were modifications to these designs, descriptive terms were added to differentiate them. Thus, a modified "Whiskey" class became "Whiskey Long Bin."
From the 1980s onwards, NATO shifted to using names derived from Russian words for new submarine classes, which added another layer to the reporting names system. An example is the NATO designation "Akula" for a new class of Soviet nuclear attack submarines. Ironically, "Akula" was actually the Soviet designation for what NATO called the "Typhoon" class, which was a ballistic missile submarine.
For Chinese submarines, NATO used names from Chinese dynasties, like "Ming" and "Song," to maintain a separate and distinguishable system of reporting names for submarines from China.
These reporting names were never used by the Soviet Union or China themselves; they were strictly a NATO convention to standardize the identification of non-NATO military equipment across the alliance's member nations. The primary purpose was to have a common and easily communicable set of names for military hardware, as the actual designations used by the Soviet Union and China were often not publicly known or used different naming conventions that could be confusing during joint NATO operations and intelligence sharing.