Understanding and Using Military Time

For instance, you may be planning your email marketing and communication campaigns from your office in New York, while your target audiences are in Paris. In this case, you’ll need to convert Eastern Time (ET) for New York to Central European Time (CET) for Paris. The simple way to think about military time is to just continue counting once you go beyond midday rather than resetting back to one. Explore everyday nuances of military life, like using 24-hour time, saluting etiquette, uniform guidelines and more. Whether telling the time via the direct observation of the stars or some other means, precision is paramount to the military. For the precision required in navigation and the syncing of mission resources of today’s armed forces, everyone must be on the same page. The primary unit of time is the “mean solar day.” A mean solar day is the average of the “true solar day,” which varies slightly in length. There are four times a year the mean and true solar days are equal, by contrast there are also days which time could vary as much as 16 or more minutes. The difference between the mean solar time and true solar time is called the “equation of time.” Whether or not you have served in the military, you’ve probably heard of military time or you may have heard someone use it. You might understand what 0800 is, but what about 1400 or 1630? If you’re not familiar with it, you might be a little confused. You may even need to take a few seconds to do the math to see what time they’re talking about. Anything between 1201 and 2359 is basically “p.m.” time. The “p.m.” hours usually give people more trouble, but always remember that 1300 (said “thirteen-hundred”) converts into 1 p.m.