Military time is a four digit number from 0000 (midnight) to 2359 (one minute to midnight). Hour times (eg: 6am) are pronounced 'oh-six-hundred'. Other times (eg: 11:30pm) are pronounced 'twenty-three-thirty'.
It's useful in programming because you don't have to worry about parsing the colon (:). Just take the integer and modulus after dividing by 100 and you have the hours and minutes.

Military time zones span the area 7.5 degrees on either side of the meridians, starting with the Prime meridian in Greenwich (0 degrees). This time zone (UTC) is called Zulu time, since zero starts with the letter Z.

From Zulu moving east, the time zones are centered on the following meridians. The time zones do not always run straight on the meridians with a 15 degree span, since local time zones are also considered.


Degrees Zone Time Difference (UTC)
0 Zulu Noon 0 15 E Alpha 1300 1 30 E Bravo 1400 2 45 E Charlie 1500 3 60 E Delta 1600 4 75 E Echo 1700 5 90 E Foxtrot 1800 6 105 E Golf 1900 7 120 E Hotel 2000 8 135 E India1 2100 9 150 E Kilo 2200 10 165 E Lima 2300 11 180 EW Mike2 2400 12 180 EW Yankee2 2400 12 165 W Xray3 0100 -11 150 W Whisky 0200 -10 135 W Victor 0300 -9 120 W Uniform 0400 -8 105 W Tango 0500 -7 90 W Sierra 0600 -6 85 W Romeo 0700 -5 60 W Quebec 0800 -4 45 W Papa 0900 -3 30 W Oscar 1000 -2 15 W November 1100 -1 0 EW Zulu 1200 0
1: I does appear as a zone. J (Juliet) is skipped, but refers to local time of the observer.
2: M and Y both refer to the International Date Line. Usually, M is west 7.5 degrees; Y is east 7.5 degrees.
3Note the change in letters and time difference.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.