Military Date-Time group format....WHY????

[Quiet Voice]

Greetings,

I'm curious to know if anyone can explain the purpose and/or benifits
of the military date-time group format.

As I understand it, the format is as follows

ddhhmmss[TZ][Mon]YY

Where
dd - numeric date
hh, mm, ss - numeric hours, min sec (24hr format)
[TZ] - one letter timezone designator
[Mon] - month (3 letter abbreviation)
YY -- two digit year


My question is WHY???

I can see how the standard military date format (dd [mon] yy) both
conforms to the international standard fo day-before-month (unlike in
the USA) and using a 3-letter abbrev for month also helps further
alleviate ambiguity.

I can see how using an ISO 8601 date format has advantages (such as
having files automatically organized in chronological in a computer
directory).

But I see NO advantages to the military DTG format.

Can anyone shed any light on the subject?

Thanks!

 

[Andrew]

I'm curious to know if anyone can explain the purpose and/or benifits
of the military date-time group format.

I am no expert, but I would have thought the fact that the GPS
satellites are provided by the US military would have something to do
with it.

 

[Quiet Voice]

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Yours is a good guess....but this format has been in use by the
military for dating telex traffic since long before GPS was around.

(Even though it is not a strictly "gps sat-nav" question, I posted to
this newsgroup because it was the only one I could find...or at least
get access to.....on USENET that had previous messages which dealt
with this sort of data format question.)

 

[David Lee]

Quiet Voice wrote ...

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Yours is a good guess....but this format has been in use by the
military for dating telex traffic since long before GPS was around.

(Even though it is not a strictly "gps sat-nav" question, I posted to
this newsgroup because it was the only one I could find...or at least
get access to.....on USENET that had previous messages which dealt
with this sort of data format question.)

I suspect the best answer you will come up with is "Because"!

It's likely that the standard is simply the format that was in use when
usage became widespread and never got changed, so it will just have been
what seemed a good idea to someone at the time. Whoever it was probably
would never have considered that he was designing a standard!

David

 

[Gary S.]

Quiet Voice wrote ...

I suspect the best answer you will come up with is "Because"!

It's likely that the standard is simply the format that was in use when
usage became widespread and never got changed, so it will just have been
what seemed a good idea to someone at the time. Whoever it was probably
would never have considered that he was designing a standard!

David

Many "standards" are not the result of design, they just sort of
happen.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)

 

[Kevin Thornton]

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Yours is a good guess....but this format has been in use by the
military for dating telex traffic since long before GPS was around.

(Even though it is not a strictly "gps sat-nav" question, I posted to
this newsgroup because it was the only one I could find...or at least
get access to.....on USENET that had previous messages which dealt
with this sort of data format question.)

just guessing but it gives the important info first, i.e. telexes and
signals would arrive soon after being sent, but 2 could possibly crossover
so the 1st thing a military chap would need to know is the day it was sent
followed by the time, the month and year are not really important for
something that you need to react to immediately

as for the timezone - a standard could be set, e.g. UTC, or you can allow
local time to be used but then you need to identify the timezone so that you
can set it in chronological order with other signals etc

 

[Alan Browne]

Greetings,

I'm curious to know if anyone can explain the purpose and/or benifits
of the military date-time group format.

I've seen the US mil use dozens of formats for date and time. Possibly in
recent years they've settled on a more common standard.

Gasp, I've even seen them use the PROPER ISO format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

(Officially a "T" should be inserted between the DD and HH, but I find that messy).

As I understand it, the format is as follows

ddhhmmss[TZ][Mon]YY

Where
dd - numeric date
hh, mm, ss - numeric hours, min sec (24hr format)
[TZ] - one letter timezone designator
[Mon] - month (3 letter abbreviation)
YY -- two digit year


My question is WHY???

I can see how the standard military date format (dd [mon] yy) both
conforms to the international standard fo day-before-month (unlike in
the USA) and using a 3-letter abbrev for month also helps further
alleviate ambiguity.

The only worldwid standard format is ISO 8601 which is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.xxxx
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

TZ seems silly. The military should understand the value and importance of
coordinating and recording time in UTC. Let local people (& systems) convert it
to local time if need be...

I can see how using an ISO 8601 date format has advantages (such as
having files automatically organized in chronological in a computer
directory).

Except that with legacy data you don't know how it was really encoded (unless a
description is in the file). Back when memory was expensive, programmers when
to all kinds of lengths to pack dates so that 230778 was pretty clear, but what
does 071278 mean?

But I see NO advantages to the military DTG format.

Like many things, it probably began arbitrarily, and then becopmes an ad hoc
standard, and then some sob makes it policy and everyone is screwed.

Cheers,
Alan

 

[Dan Condon]

When I was in the Navy, the teletype machine was going 24/ 7... The DTG made
it much easier for the communications crew to put these telexes in order on
the clipboard which was read and initialed by the various commanders...
(For what it's worth)

 

[Quiet Voice]

Thanks for the response.

Y'know....now that I think about it, you're probably right!!

So much of what happens in the military reminds me of that joke about
a camel being a horse designed by comittee. So bunch of bureaucrats
buried deep in the bowels of the pentagon just somehow "come up" with
an idea and >>presto<< hundreds for front-line GI grunts are saddled
with a dumb burden....

After all, who was the genius who came up with the idea for those
berets???? Does a hell of a job keeping the sun out of their eyes,
I'll bet! But then, pentagon bureaucrats don't need to worry about
little thintgs like that.....

Opps, now you've gotten me on a rant!

[PS: Anyway, thank for the input. Any ideas where else one might go to
track down an answer? I tried sci.military but google won't let me
post there.]

 

[Alan Browne]

When I was in the Navy, the teletype machine was going 24/ 7... The DTG made
it much easier for the communications crew to put these telexes in order on
the clipboard which was read and initialed by the various commanders...
(For what it's worth)

That is worth a lot ... almost as much as if everyone adopted the ISO format
once and for all...

Cheers,
Alan.

 

[gpsmaps]

You should sent you question to the show called Mail Call on the History
Channel and maybe it can get answered there.