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). The order may vary, for example, "23:31 Oct 17, 2012 (UTC)".
In military messages and communications (e.g. on maps showing troop movements) the format is DDHHMMZ Mon YY, so for instance, "271545Z FEB 08" represents 15:45 Zulu time (which is to say UTC) on the 27th of February, 2008.
Note 1: The DTG is usually placed in the header of the message.
Note 2: The DTG may be used as a message identifier if it is unique for each message.
Note 3: 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.
This article incorporates public domain material from the General Services Administration document "Federal Standard 1037C".
See also Calendar date, ISO 8601 in Internet standards.
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