How do militaries name their vehicles/equipment/weapons

Does anyone know if there is a naming convention for military equipment and vehicles and aircraft? Or is it just thought of at the time of development?

E.g. how would missile or tank get it's name? M1 or M945 etc

Some make sense to me like AH-1 (which I'm assuming stands for attack helicopter)

But it's the vehicles that start with the letter M is that I'm mostly confused about.

Well, here in Germany it's quite simple, at least for vehicles. We just give them random animal names:

Tiger, Leopard, Boxer, Wiesel (weasel), Wolf (wulf), Dingo, Marder (mustelidae), Puma, Enok (raccoon dog), Ozelot (ocelot), Büffel (buffalo), Bieber (beaver), Leguan (lizard), Eagle, Keiler (boar), Dachs (badger), Fennek (fennec), Mammut (mammoth), ...

So visiting an army museum of the Bundeswehr is just like visiting a zoo. :D

This covers aircraft designations pretty well, although it can still be confusing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_United_States_Tri-Service_aircraft_designation_system

For ground stuff like weapons and vehicles, "M" just stands for "Model".

The name is usually chosen by an internal or government approved poll, afaik. The prefix varies depending on country. In Russia it's the manufacturer (Su for Sukhoi, etc), in the USA it's a role designator (F for fighter, also NATO codenames are role designators based on the first letter). Euros don't always have a prefix, just a name, although the Swedes have role based ones like the US.

The number following the prefix is usually generational in nature, but not always. AH-1 was the first attack helicopter... but then we get the AH-64, so obviously that didn't apply. But usually they're sequential.

I think that's up to every government usually. They can stick to the official factory name, to the original country army name, or put their own official military name.

Here in Spain for instance, and aviation wise, they take a similar approach to USAF with their A-x, F-x, names but in Spanish and with numbers in order since the 30's. So officially the F/A-18 Hornet is named C.15, C for fighter in Spanish, 15 the number in order were C.1 was a biplane in the 30's, C.4 the Bf109, C.8 the Starfighter, C.14 Mirage F1. You see the pattern. Anyway, that's mostly an internal name for documents and everything, still people know the thing for their known name.

S!