Military Time Converter (12-Hour ↔ 24-Hour Military Time & Zulu Time)

How it works

AM: 12:xx AM → 00xx, 1:00–11:59 AM → same digits with a leading zero (7:05 AM → 0705) · PM: add 12 to the hour (2:30 PM → 14 + 30 → 1430), except 12:xx PM stays 12xx · back to 12-hour: hours 13–23 minus 12 → PM; 00 → 12 AM · Zulu = local − UTC offset

Military time is the 24-hour clock written as four digits without a colon: the first two digits are the hour from 00 to 23, the last two the minutes. It removes any AM/PM ambiguity, which is why armed forces, hospitals, aviation, emergency services and most of the world outside the US use it. In the US military it is spoken digit-group by digit-group ("fourteen thirty hours"), and times are often given in Zulu time — Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) — so that units in different time zones share one clock.

Worked example

2:30 PM is afternoon, so add 12 to the hour: 2 + 12 = 14, giving 1430 military time (14:30 on a 24-hour clock), 870 minutes after midnight. With a UTC offset of −5 (US Eastern Standard Time) the same moment is 1930Z in Zulu time.

Sources: NIST — Time and frequency: UTC · US Navy — Military time and Zulu time (NAVEDTRA)

Frequently asked questions