The military uses a 24-hour time format rather than two 12-hour formats separated by am and pm. New recruits joining the military will be expected to use it, though it shouldn’t take much time to adjust to this system. Therefore, if someone says seven o’clock, the military knows exactly that this indicates 7:00 in the morning (am).Īmong military members, seven o’clock in the evening (pm) would always be referred to as 1900 (nineteen hundred hours).Ī 24-hour clock is also used by other organizations in which precision and clarity are essential.
With a system of time based on a 24-hour clock rather than twelve-hour intervals of am and pm, the hour numbers do not repeat. The primary reason for using military time in the Armed Forces is to avoid any confusion that may arise with the am/pm time system. Why Does the Military Use Military Time? Image: Note that the colon between the hour and minutes is omitted in writing military time. Therefore, if someone reports 1348 in military time, you can convert it to civilian time by subtracting 1200 from 1348, resulting in 1:48 pm. If you wanted to convert back from military time to civilian time, you would simply subtract 12 to arrive at the pm hour and minutes. 5:50 am = 0550 (“five-fifty” or, less commonly, “oh-five-fifty).Here are more examples to illustrate the conversion: In the case of any set time that is not rounded to the hour, the “hundred” is usually not indicated. If the time is 3:22 pm, you would still add 12 to 3:22, giving you 1522 (fifteen-twenty-two) hours. The easiest way to convert it is, for any interval after 12:00 pm, to take the unit number of the pm time (hours and minutes) and add 12 to it.įor example, to convert 3 pm to military time, you would take 3 (the unit number of the pm time) and add 12 to it, so it becomes 15, or 1500 (15 hundred hours). Of course, it’s much more practical to know an easy way to convert to military time rather than relying on a table as listed above. The word “hours” is often placed at the end of military time intervals when it is on the exact hour, as shown in the table above.įor example, you might hear someone in the military report that the scheduled meeting time is at “sixteen-hundred hours,” which would be 4:00 pm. 11:00 pm = 2300 (“twenty-three-hundred”)Īnd here’s the same military time conversion in chart format: Civilian Time.12:00 am = 0000 (usually spoken as “twenty-four hundred”).Here is a breakdown of military time by the hour: It can be confusing at first for civilians to understand time based on 24-hour intervals rather than a total of twelve repeating am and pm hours. Why Does the Military Use Military Time?.
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