NATO Alphabet
By Logan Godden
In this essay we will be talking about The NATO Alphabet. The NATO, or North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Alphabet is a list of code words Used by NATO. The code words are used so the individual countries can communicate with each other, and the enemy can’t understand their strategies that will be used because of their lack of telecommunication equipment.
The NATO Phonetic Alphabet was made to make communications a bit easier as well as to increase the understanding of radio transmissions in aviation. The NATO phonetic alphabet is a series of international agencies assigned 26 code words to the letters of the Roman alphabet with the intention that letters and numbers can be easily distinguishable from one another over radio and telephone regardless of language or any other barriers.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental organization where different countries come together to create a large peace-force that upholds the peace and safety of other countries who need it. NATO helps their supporting allies. To communicate clearly, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet is used among all the countries in this alliance.
This NATO alphabet was needed to effectively communicate during joint operations between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia and prompted the combined communications to change the U.S. military’s Joint Army and Navy alphabet so it could be used by all three nations. The NATO codes are also used by agencies and businesses. The codes are also used by any sort of aviation divisions aspect.
In the 1920s a special agency of the United Nations named the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, created the first official version of a phonetic alphabet. The difference between the Original NATO code from the 1920s compared to the newer version from the 1940s to now is in the following list: 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 purpose of the codes was to make communication easier for non-English speaking countries to still communicate to English-speaking countries effectively. Over time the NATO alphabet changed in order to be more effective and able to be understood by certain dialects who aren’t able to say certain letters in English. These codes were to be transferred through radio and telephone so the countries could stay up to date on battle plans and strategies.