#Nato spelling alphabet code#
#Nato spelling alphabet series#

For instance the message 'proceed to map grid DH98' could be transmitted as 'proceed to map grid Delta-Hotel-Niner-Ait'.

JSTOR ( February 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī spelling alphabet is used to spell parts of a message containing letters and numbers to avoid confusion, because many letters sound similar, for instance 'n' and 'm' or 'f' and 's' the potential for confusion increases if static or other interference is present.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: 'NATO phonetic alphabet' – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification. In practice these are used very rarely, as they are not held in common between agencies.

NATO uses the regular English numeric words (zero, one, two &c., though with some differences in pronunciation), whereas the ITU (beginning on 1 April 1969) and the IMO define compound numeric words (nadazero, unaone, bissotwo &c.).

#Nato spelling alphabet code#

The same alphabetic code words are used by all agencies, but each agency chooses one of two different sets of numeric code words. 4.3 International maritime mobile serviceĪfter the code words were developed by ICAO (see history below), they were adopted by other national and international organizations, including the ITU, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United States Federal Government as Federal Standard 1037C: Glossary of Telecommunications Terms and its successors ANSI T1.523-2001 and ATIS Telecom Glossary (ATIS-0100523.2019) (all three using the spellings 'Alpha' and 'Juliet'), the United States Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (using the spelling 'Xray'), the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO), and by many military organizations such as NATO (using the spelling 'Xray') and the now-defunct Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).Nonetheless, several regions have changed a single word that is problematic for them. To change one word involves reconsideration of the whole alphabet to ensure that the change proposed to clear one confusion does not itself introduce others. One of the firmest conclusions reached was that it was not practical to make an isolated change to clear confusion between one pair of letters. It is known that has been prepared only after the most exhaustive tests on a scientific basis by several nations. Numbers are spoken as English digits, but with the pronunciations of three, four, five, nine, and thousand modified. 'Alfa' and 'Juliett' are intentionally spelled as such to avoid mispronunciations. The 26 code words are as follows (ICAO spellings): Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. The words were chosen to be accessible to speakers of English, French and Spanish.Īlthough spelling alphabets are commonly called 'phonetic alphabets', they should not be confused with phonetic transcription systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In 1956, NATO modified the then-current set of code words used by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) this modification then became the international standard when it was accepted by ICAO that year and by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) a few years later. The specific code words varied, as some seemingly distinct words were found to be ineffective in real-life conditions.

#Nato spelling alphabet series#

To create the code, a series of international agencies assigned 26 code words acrophonically to the letters of the Roman alphabet, with the intention of the letters and numbers being easily distinguishable from one another over radio and telephone, regardless of language barriers and connection quality. The ITU phonetic alphabet and figure code is a rarely used variant that differs in the code words for digits. It goes by various names, including NATO spelling alphabet, ICAO phonetic alphabet and ICAO spelling alphabet. The (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used set of clear code words for communicating the letters of the Roman alphabet, technically a radiotelephonic spelling alphabet. FAA radiotelephony alphabet and Morse code chart