Date-time group

In communications messages, a date-time group (DTG) is a set of characters, usually in a prescribed format, used to express the year, the month, the day of the month, the hour of the day, the minute of the hour, and the time zone, if different from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).^{[citation needed]} The order in which these elements are presented may vary. The DTG is usually placed in the header of the message. One example is "00:15 Mar 01, 2024 (UTC)"; while another example is "00:15 01 Mar 2024".

The DTG may indicate either the date and time a message was dispatched by a transmitting station or the date and time it was handed into a transmission facility by a user or originator for dispatch.

The DTG may be used as a message identifier if it is unique for each message.

Military Date Time Group

A form of DTG is used in the US Military's message traffic (a form of Automated Message Handling System). In US military messages and communications (e.g., on maps showing troop movements) the format is DD HHMM (SS) Z MON YY. Although occasionally seen with spaces, it can also be written as a single string of characters. Three different formats can be found:

• DDHHMMSSZmmmYY - Full time (used for software timestamps)
• DDHHMMZmmmYY - shortened time (used e.g. for timestamps manually written)
• DDHHMMZ - short time (e.g. used for planning)

Z references the military identifier of time zone:

• UTC-12: Y (e.g., Baker Island)
• UTC-11: X (American Samoa, Niue)
• 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; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
• UTC-2: O (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands)
• 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, as well as Moscow in Russia)
• UTC+4: D (Oman, the UAE)
• UTC+5: E (Pakistan, western Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan)
• UTC+6: F (eastern Kazakhstan, Bangladesh)
• UTC+7: G (Thailand)
• UTC+8: H (Beijing, China, Singapore)
• UTC+9: I (Tokyo, Japan)
• UTC+10: K (Brisbane, Australia)
• UTC+11: L (Sydney, Australia)
• UTC+12: M (Wellington, New Zealand)

Examples

Example 1: 051100Z represents the 5th day of the current month 11:00 (UTC).

Example 2: 091630Tjul11 represents 9 July 2011 4:30 pm (MST).

Example 3: 01001543ZMar24 represents the current time of refresh: (Mar) 01 00:15:43, Mar 2024 (UTC).

"Zulu time" does not mean "local time" unless a Zulu time zone is specified. Earth rotates in 24 hours, thus there are 24 hours in a day. The English alphabet has 26 letters; J is local time, and the other 25 letters are assigned to the 25 time zones. The International Date Line separates time zones M and Y. Zulu [Z] is a synonym for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC); and formerly a synonym for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).^[1]

Sources

• MIL-STD-2500A Archived 21 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine 12 October 1994

See also

• Calendar date
• ISO 8601

References

• TM 20-205, the Dictionary of United States Army Terms (1944)
• ACP 121(I) p 3–7

External links

 This article incorporates public domain material from "date-time group (DTG)". Federal Standard 1037C. General Services Administration. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022.

This page was last edited on 11 February 2024, at 20:38