"This is no drill" is pretty standard terminology, and has been for a long time. Though I believe that in Frank's neck of the woods, the equivalent is "Hey y'all, we ain't s****ing this time."

Back when I was in Aerospace Defense Command, they had "exercise" terms for the standard Defense Conditions ("DEFCONs") to allow drills to occur without actually using the term "DEFON" in any communications. "Fade Out" for DEFCON 5, "Round House" for DEFCON 3, etc. Had similar cases for ADC-specific alert conditions...used a color phrase instead of Red, Yellow, and Green. Would have been nice if the exercise term for ADC Yellow" was "Yellow Snow," but no such luck. Maybe they have "Orange Coif" now.

A while after I got out of the Air Force, I read an article by a civilian who got to tour Cheyenne Mountain or some similar alert center. They saw a sign under "DEFCON" saying "Cocked Pistol."

"'Cocked Pistol'?" they asked the AF Public Affairs Officer escorting them. "Cocked NUCLEAR Pistol????!!!!!"

"I'm sorry," said the PAO, deadpan. "That's classified." And he was exactly correct; the correlation of the exercise terms was classified.

The article went on to say how the world was doomed, DOOMED, because the Air Force was running around with cocked nuclear pistols. In reality, of course, it was an exercise.

I got an especially big kick out of that because of what "Cocked Pistol" meant where where I worked. We were operating early-warning satellites, and the ground system had a combination of automatic and manual detection. When the DEFCON got that high, we'd just settle back and punch the "automatic" button. We were absolved of all responsibilities...no secure voice calls to NORAD, no more logbook entries to be made, no notification of false events, didn't even have to assess what was going on in the displays. Going to "Cocked Pistol" was, essentially, our break time.

Mind you, if the ACTUAL Defense Condition went that high, we would have been roiling radioactive dust. They figured our site would be one of the first targeted.

Ron "It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt" Wanttaja