UNMC Military Reference Charts

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Updated: 07/26/2008

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UNMC Military Reference Charts

Introduction

As the UNSGC is made up of personnel both civil and military, from many nations, it is vital that we all use the same references, codes etc. The following material, which will be added to in due course, is provided for your information and clarification:

Click this link to go to the full list of ISO Country Codes as used by the UNMC, such as GB for the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

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Section 1: NATO Inteligence Evaluation Legend

The following table gives the NATO standard format for expressing the quality of inteligence. Comprising an alpha-numeric code of one letter and one number. The letter is the quality of the source of the information, while the number is a judgement about the quality of the information itself.

Letter	Meaning	Number	Meaning
A	Completely Reliable	1	Confirmed By Other Sources
B	Usually Reliable	2	Probably True
C	Fairly Reliable	3	Possibly True
D	Not Usually Reliable	4	Doubtfully True
E	Unreliable	5	Improbable
F	Reliability Unknown	6	Truth Cannot Be Judged

Section 2: The NATO Standard Phonetic Alphabet

During verbal radio/telephone communications, it is sometimes required to clarify a detail by spelling out a word. However, when either due to a poor signal, or the stress or noise of combat, such messages can become easily garbled, and so a clearer method of denoting letters and numbers is essential. The standard system used throughout the US and allied military services including the UNMC is the so-called International system formalised and adopted by NATO in 1956. ALL personnel should memorise and use this system while in UNSGC service.

Included in the table below purely as reference material for researchers who are studying US military reports pre-dating 1956, there are several alternative systems. Prior to 1941 each branch of the US services had their own phonetic alphabet which caused a great deal of problems with inter-service communications. Fortunately virtually all the material of that era that can in anyway be considered as relating to the Star Gate program, came under the durastiction of the US Navy and Marine Corps, and so we have only included those services systems in the table below. In 1941 the Joint Army/Navy or JAN Phonetic Alphabet was adopted for use by all branches, but even then as can be seen in the entries below, it was not totally uniform.

The last collum carries the system used by US police and rescue services, which maybe of use to inteligence analysts. It is recommended that those UNSGC personnel operating with or assigned to, any of these kinds of US based/trained organisations, should also be fully conversant with these alternatives.

Table A: Letters

Letter	NATO 1956+	USN 1913	USN 1927	USN 1938	JAN 1941	US Police and Rescue
A	Alpha	Able	Affirmative	Afirm	Afirm Able	Adam
B	Bravo	Boy	Baker	Baker	Baker	Boy
C	Charlie	Cast	Cast	Cast	Charlie	Charles
D	Delta	Dog	Dog	Dog	Dog	David
E	Echo	Easy	Easy	Easy	Easy	Edward
F	Foxtrot	Fox	Fox	Fox	Fox	Frank
G	Golf	George	George	George	George	George
H	Hotel	Have	Hypo	Hypo	How Hypo	Henry
I	India	Item	Interrogatory	Int	Int Item	Ida
J	Juliett	Jig	Jig	Jig	Jig	John
K	Kilo	King	King	King	King	King
L	Lima	Love	Love	Love	Love	Lincoln
M	Mike	Mike	Mike	Mike	Mike	Mary
N	November	Nan	Negative	Negat	Negat Nan Nutley	Nora
O	Oscar	Oboe	Option	Option	Option Oboe	Ocean
P	Papa	Pup	Preparatory	Prep	Prep Peter	Paul
Q	Quebec	Quack	Quack	Queen	Queen	Queen
R	Romeo	Rush	Roger	Roger	Roger	Robert
S	Siera	Sail	Sail	Sail	Sugar Sail	Sam
T	Tango	Tare	Tare	Tare	Tare	Tom
U	Uniform	Unit	Unit	Unit	Uncle	Union
V	Victor	Vice	Vice	Victor	Victor	Victor
W	Whisky	Watch	William	William	William	William
X	X-ray	X-ray	X-ray	X-ray	X-ray	X-ray
Y	Yankee	Yoke	Yoke	Yoke	Yoke	Young
Z	Zulu	Zed	Zed	Zed	Zebra	Zebra

Table B: Numbers

Note that the numbers 5 and 9 have readability issues, for example the words "five" and "fire" can be confused. Therefore "Fife" and "Niner" are the exceptional expressions. Although NATO operators may use either "Five" or "Fife" as local SOPs specify.

0	Zero	1	One	2	Two	3	Three	4	Four
5	Five/Fife	6	Six	7	Seven	8	Eight	9	Niner

Section 3: NATO APP-6a Map Symbols

The following links are to pages concerned with the current NATO APP-6a map symbols used for marking military maps, plans and organisational charts.

Link	Description
United Nations Military Symbols Handbook	A downloadable 77 page PDF document providing the NATO tactical symbols (APP-6a) used in the planning of military operations, with a special emphesis upon peacekeepping.
The Basic Symbols: A Quick Reference	A one page quick reference document providing basic tactical symbols used in the planning of military operations.
Wiki's Basic Symbols	Wikipedia's one page article on the APP-6a NATO tactical symbol system.
Military Symbols Font	A page with information on downloading a freeware application to use the current APP-6a NATO military tactical symbols in a True Type Font format on your computer.
Mil.Std.2525B	The full 556 page PDF document detailing NATO's APP-6a Military Map Symbol System adopted by the US armed forces as Military Standard 2525B. This is a 4.714Mb. file.

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