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Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
Nope, this was the US Department of Defense, not the UK's Ministry of Defense, who were the ones that came up with Brown Bunny/Blue Bunny/Blue Peacock.
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That's not correct. Rainbow codes were assigned by the British Ministry of Supply. Blue Peacock was officially assigned by the MoS in May 1957 after Blue Bunny was compromised. Blue seems to have started as a code for potential nuclear weapons, since Blue Danube was the first British nuclear warhead, Blue Boar was a TV-guided bomb that was intended to use Blue Danube, Blue Bunny/Peacock was a nuclear mine, Blue Cat was a British derivative of the Mk.44, Blue Envoy was a nuclear SAM, Blue Rosette was a short-cased nuke for the (cancelled) Avro 730 bomber, Blue Slug was a nuclear SSM, Blue Streak was the nuclear-armed Skybolt missile (and one of its warheads was Blue Water), Blue Stone was the initiator for the Green Grass warhead used on the Blue Steel missile, etc. It's definitely a British project (it was the British National Archives that declassified the project in 2004), and it was developed by RARDE in Kent. One of the prototypes is on display at the Atomic Weapons Establishment Educational Collection at the former RAF Aldermaston.
The US equivalent of Blue Peacock at the time was the W-7/ADM-B, using a down-rated warhead that was otherwise similar to the ones from Honest John (and had no chickens).