Date-time group

The date / time group (Date Time Group, DTG ) is a format for dates with time in NATO. In addition to cooperation with other armed forces within NATO, for example, one needs to avoid even within the armed forces of a country a uniform way of communicating to misunderstandings.

Construction

A Date Time Group is composed of a sequence of eight numbers and four letters.

The first two digits describe the day, the following four digits of the time in the 24 -hour count, followed by a letter indicating the time zone. After the time zone of the month is specified by a uniform abbreviation consisting of three letters and optional at the end followed by the indication of the year in the form of two digits. All information is omitted separator as the point or the colon. However, for readability, it is not uncommon for partially or completely separating the segments with spaces.

It should be noted that the day and the year is always two digits.

Example

The DTG 031732Bjul04 is interpreted as follows:

As prescribed by the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October summer time, read B; during the normal time, around January, it says A, eg 031732Ajan04.

Monthly data

Monthly data are given in the English abbreviation according to the following schedule.

Time zones

Within the armed forces of a country applies for national exercises / projects, the typical time zone, eg for the Bundeswehr 's time zone Alfa, bearing in mind that this is the Central European Time, while the Central European Summer Time time zone Bravo equivalent. Do different forces together in a multinational exercise, it is important to determine another valid for all time zone. In the NATO area, this is the time zone Zulu ( Universal Time Coordinated, UTC).

Examples: The July 3, 2004 at 17:32 clock in Germany is 15:32 UTC clock, the DTG is 031532Zjul04. The January 3, 2004 at 17:32 clock in Germany is 16:32 UTC clock, the DTG is 031632Zjan04. To convert UTC see.

For the military designations of the 25 time zones, the difference to UTC is all hours and in the range -12 to 12 h is h, the letters of the alphabet except J are used. J ( Juliet ) always refers to the local time, and is therefore not unique. To the east of the prime meridian with the time zone Z ( Zulu, UTC ± 0 h ), the time zones with the letters A ( Alfa, UTC 1 h ) to M (Mike, UTC 12 h ) denotes, in a westerly direction with N ( November, UTC -1 h) to Y ( Yankee, UTC -12 h). For time zones that differ odd multiples of half an hour from UTC, an asterisk is the letter of the prime meridian located closer to the time zone appended, at a distance of 45 minutes a pound. Examples are in the Newfoundland time zone * P (UTC -03: 30) or Afghanistan in the time zone D * ( UTC 04:30 ). Exceptions are the M time zones which have more than 12 hours apart to UTC. Thus, the Line Islands have indeed a time difference of 14 hours from UTC (UTC 14:00 ) but these west of the dateline, so the time zone is marked with a cross as M †. The same exception relates to the time zones M ♦ (UTC 12:45, Chatham Iceland ) and M * (UTC 13:00, Phoenix Islands and Tonga ).