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The Military Date Time Group (DTG) format is used in everything from operations orders to airlifts, and it is essential for every service member to know how to put together a DTG format correctly.

Date Time Group is traditionally formatted as DDHHMM(Z)MONYY

An example is 630pm on January 6th, 2012 in Fayetteville NC would read 061830RJAN12

DD-Day of the month (e.g. January 6th=06)

HHMM- Time in 24 hr format +military time zone (e.g. 6:30pm in =1830).

Z- Military identifier- see below for complete list

MON- 3 digit month code, (e.g. January= JAN)

YY- 2 Digit year, (e.g. 2012= 12)

Military Time Code

The military time zone is used as a representation to Coordinate Universal Time (UTC) which is based on hours + or – Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is considered hour 0.

In military time code reference, Greenwich Mean time is referred to as Zulu (Z). In operations spanning multiple time zones, zulu will be used to give all operating units a time zone to adjust their time to so that everyone is on the same page.

One common mistake when using the military time code is to use “L” as Local time. In fact “L” is used to represent the time code for UTC+11 which covers parts of Russia and Australia. When referring to your time zone be sure to see what your local code identifier is by using the reference below.

Military Time Code Letter Reference:

UTC -12: Y- (e.g. Fiji)

UTC-11: X (American Samoa)

UTC-10: W (Honolulu, HI)

UTC-9: V (Juneau, AK)

UTC-8: U (PST, Los Angeles, CA)

UTC-7: T (MST, Denver, CO)

UTC-6: S (CST, Dallas, TX)

UTC-5: R (EST, New York, NY)

UTC-4: Q (Halifax, Nova Scotia

UTC-3: P (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

UTC-2: O (Godthab, Greenland)

UTC-1: N (Azores)

UTC+-0: Z (Zulu time)

UTC+1: A (France)

UTC+2: B (Athens, Greece)

UTC+3: C (Arab Standard Time, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar)

UTC+4: D (Used for Moscow, Russia and Afghanistan, however, Afghanistan is technically +4:30 from UTC)

UTC+5: E (Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan)

UTC+6: F (Bangladesh)

UTC+7: G (Thailand)

UTC+8: H (Beijing, China)

UTC+9: I (Tokyo, Australia)

UTC+10: K (Brisbane, Australia)

UTC+11: L (Sydney, Australia)

UTC+12: M (Wellington, New Zealand)