Military Time Converter

What Is Military Time?

Military time is a way of expressing time that uses the 24-hour clock system. It is commonly used by the military, emergency services, and some countries around the world. Military time eliminates the confusion that can arise from using the 12-hour clock system, where the same numbers can mean different times of the day.

Why Use Military Time?

Military time has many advantages over regular time, especially when it comes to clarity and accuracy. Here are some of the benefits of using military time:

• It is the preferred international time format. Additionally, it is most often used in official documents.
• It avoids confusion between AM and PM hours. For example, 10:00 could mean 10:00 AM or 10:00 PM in regular time, but in military time, 10:00 always means 10:00 AM, while 10:00 PM is 2200.
• It eliminates the need for suffixes like AM and PM, which can be easily overlooked or forgotten. For example, if you write 5:00 PM on a document, someone might miss the PM and think it’s 5:00 AM. But if you write 1700, there is no room for error.
• It makes it easier to calculate time intervals and durations. For example, if you use military time, you just have to subtract 0800 from 1600, which also gives you 8 hours.

How to Read Military Time?

Reading military time is not as difficult as it may seem. All you need to know is that military time uses the 24-hour clock system, where the hours of the day are numbered from 00 to 23, starting from midnight.

The first two digits of military time represent the hour, and the last two digits represent the minutes. There is no separator between the hours and the minutes, and there is no suffix like AM or PM.

To read military time, you just have to follow these simple rules:

• If the military time is less than 1200, it means the same as the regular time in the AM hours. For example, 0600 means 6:00 AM, and 0930 means 9:30 AM.
• If the military time is equal to 1200, it means noon or 12:00 PM in regular time.
• If the military time is greater than 1200, it means the same as the regular time in the PM hours, minus 12. For example, 1300 means 1:00 PM, and 1830 means 6:30 PM.
• If the military time is equal to 0000, it means midnight or 12:00 AM in regular time.

To pronounce military time, you just have to say each digit separately, followed by the word “hours”. For example, 0600 is pronounced as “zero six hundred hours”, and 1545 is pronounced as “fifteen forty-five hours”.

Military Time Chart

You can also use our military time chart to see the conversion between military time and regular time for each hour of the day. You can easily find the corresponding time in either format by following the rows across the chart.

What Are Military Time Zones?

Another feature of military time is that it uses a special system of time zones, based on the letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet. Each letter represents a different time zone, with a fixed offset from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

The letter Z, or Zulu, is the most commonly used time zone in military time, as it represents UTC itself. This means that Zulu time is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the standard time used by most of the world.

Other letters represent different time zones, with a positive or negative offset from Zulu time. For example, A, or Alpha, is one hour ahead of Zulu time, while N, or November, is one hour behind Zulu time.

To indicate the time zone of military time, you just have to add the letter suffix at the end of the time value. For example, 0600Z means 6:00 AM in Zulu time, while 0600A means 6:00 AM in Alpha time.

Here is a table of the military time zones and their corresponding offsets from Zulu time:

Note that the letters J and Z are not used as time zone suffixes, as they are reserved for special purposes. J, or Juliett, is used to denote local time, while Z, or Zulu, is used to denote UTC.