Made a decoder for the military codewords in the 46 UAP files from Luna’s March 31 request (Hackney, Voodoo, Cranberry, AESIR11 + more)

We've been working through the Department of War's May 8 release and getting set up for the OG 46 Rep. Luna actually requested back on March 31, which are still outstanding. One thing that kept slowing us down: the file names. Half of them read like radio chatter… Hackney 6 (MQ-9), Voodoo 4X (Cranberry), AESIR11. Without context you can't tell what's a unit, what's an aircraft, and what's the UAP itself.

So we spent a chunk of the past weekend putting a short decoder together. Full thing's in the video, a few of the entries:

• Hackney, Voodoo, Toxic, Jacker, Warlock are all rotating mission callsigns for U.S. military units. Same unit can be "Hackney" on one mission and "Toxic" on the next, done for radio security so a single callsign doesn't get pinned to a single unit. Two different codenames across files might be the same crew on different days.
• The number after the callsign matters. "6" is the unit commander, "X" denotes a specific crew or flight within that unit on that day.
• The parenthetical can mean three different things depending on what's in it. Hackney 6 (MQ-9) means the commander was flying a Reaper. Hackney 6 (Toxic 6) means same commander on a different mission callsign. Voodoo 4X (Cranberry) means Voodoo unit, fourth crew of the day, target codenamed Cranberry.
• Cranberry, Lavender, Steel, Mint are the UAP target callsigns themselves. Random soft words (foods, colors, metals) deliberately chosen because on a high-stress radio call you can't have anyone confusing the unknown object with friendly aircraft.
• AESIR11 is a Norse mythology callsign. Reportedly the F-16 on the Lake Huron shootdown, though that connection's community-attributed rather than DoD-confirmed.
• FLIR vs IIR. FLIR is the targeting pod brand that became genericized (Tic Tac, Gimbal, GoFast were all FLIR). Most of the 46 are actually IIR (Imaging Infrared), a different sensor system mounted under aircraft and drones. Matters if you want to compare cases since the operating envelopes differ.

There's more in the video — AFSOC, NGA, AARO, HH-11, IR Hot, Remix, USO.

Decoder lives on our pentagonufofiles.io index along with the rest of the May 8 release. We'll add the OG 46 there too when they finally drop.