What is the NATO phonetic alphabet?

A set of 26 code words, one per letter (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), chosen so letters are not confused over radio or telephone. It was adopted by the ICAO in 1956 and is formally the ICAO spelling alphabet.

Is it Alpha or Alfa, Juliet or Juliett?

The official ICAO spellings are Alfa and Juliett, chosen so that speakers of French and other languages pronounce them correctly. Alpha and Juliet are the usual English spellings and mean the same thing; this tool outputs Alpha and Juliet and accepts both on input.

How do you say numbers in the NATO alphabet?

Digits are spoken as words: Zero, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine. Aviation often says "niner" for 9, "tree" for 3 and "fife" for 5 to avoid confusion over radio.

NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Spell text out as Alfa, Bravo, Charlie.

About NATO Phonetic Alphabet

A NATO phonetic alphabet converter spells text out as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie code words, and turns a list of code words back into letters and digits.

How to use

Type or paste letters, digits and spaces, or a list of NATO code words. Auto mode detects the direction; the switch at the top forces Text → NATO or NATO → Text.
The result appears as you type and has a Copy button.
Characters that have no code word (punctuation, accents) show an error naming the character.

What it supports

All 26 letters using the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) spelling alphabet, with the common spellings Alpha, Juliet and X-ray.
Digits 0–9 are spelled out as Zero to Nine, and a space becomes (Space).
Decoding is case-insensitive and also accepts the official ICAO spellings Alfa and Juliett, as well as Xray and Space.
Code words are separated by whitespace, so "Alpha Bravo" and "alpha bravo" both decode. Output letters are uppercase.
Any word that is not a code word stops decoding with an error, so it is not a general text-to-letters tool.

Example

XUTIL 42
→ X-ray Uniform Tango India Lima (Space) Four Two

Privacy

Runs in the browser. No request is made, and nothing is stored.

Frequently asked questions

What is the NATO phonetic alphabet?: A set of 26 code words, one per letter (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), chosen so letters are not confused over radio or telephone. It was adopted by the ICAO in 1956 and is formally the ICAO spelling alphabet.
Is it Alpha or Alfa, Juliet or Juliett?: The official ICAO spellings are Alfa and Juliett, chosen so that speakers of French and other languages pronounce them correctly. Alpha and Juliet are the usual English spellings and mean the same thing; this tool outputs Alpha and Juliet and accepts both on input.
How do you say numbers in the NATO alphabet?: Digits are spoken as words: Zero, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine. Aviation often says "niner" for 9, "tree" for 3 and "fife" for 5 to avoid confusion over radio.

Encode & decode

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Data formats

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HTML Formatter: Indent and tidy HTML, or strip it down to one line.
XML Formatter: Pretty-print or minify XML, with error positions.
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Word play

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Reference

ASCII Table: Every ASCII character with its decimal, hex, octal, binary and HTML code.
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