At first glance, 8:30 am may seem like just another regular time of day. However, when referring to military time, 8:30 am takes on a whole new meaning.
Military time is a special way of expressing the times of day. It is also known as 24-hour clock or "Z-time". Military time replaces traditional am and pm with the hours 0 to 23. 8:30 am in military time would be expressed as 0830 hours.
It's helpful to look at the hours more by halves when reading military time. Halve the number up to 12 and add 12 if it is an afternoon time. For example, 10:00 am in civilian (traditional) time is expressed as 1000 hours in military time and 10:00pm in civilian (traditional) time would be expressed as 2200 hours in military time.
Military personnel use this type of standardized timing since it removes any confusion between different locales and their corresponding times zones. Additionally, aircraft and other navigation systems use Zulu Time which corresponds to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). With this system in place there is no need for multiple clocks that operate on differing lines for each location because all timing systems reference GMT or "Zulu" which remains constant with no need for conversion tables or calculations.
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