You have often seen actors who play military characters in coding in Bollywood films based on Army. In these, words like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta are used well. Even in the year 2005, a film by Ajay Devgan and Bobby Deol was named ‘Tango Charlie’. But what does these words used during an operation mean? Why does the army use such words for telecommunications. Let us tell you in detail.
Essential in radio communication
In an interview to ‘Lalantop’, Lieutenant General Yogesh Kumar Joshi (retired), the hero of Kargil War, said that one of our Infantry Battalions has four rifle companies Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Then there is a head quarter company. He told that these names are not of the British rule, but army companies have been using these words before and are still doing today.
Apart from the names of the company, these code words also have a different meaning. In fact, during duty, soldiers need radio communication to talk to each other and during this time one company or an officer uses these words to talk to another company. Radio communication is very important for army personnel doing duty in inaccessible areas of the country and the mistake of a word made here can also cause great harm.
Fonetic alphabet got the name
In such a situation, an attempt is made to give his clean message to the person in less words. Because in inaccessible areas, satellite phones also sometimes lose signals and communication among themselves is very difficult. If the English letters like EC or PB do the same type of sound, then there is scope for mistake in the message, these code words have been prepared to avoid this.
These keywords have been named Fonetic Alphabet, which contains many words like Charlie, Alpha, Bravo and many words like Eco, Golf, Victor. The advantage of using such words is that even if an enemy listens to our communication, he will not understand anything. The soldiers working in security agencies come from different environment and language fields, so their tone of speaking is also different. For this reason, a standard vocabulary has been created so that everyone can easily pass the message in the same way and the message will also be cleared to the listener.
For example, it contains A to Alpha, B to Bravo, C to Charlie, D to DELTA and L. LIMA. Also, grammar is fixed for the pronunciation of these words. So that people coming from different backgrounds and language areas use these code words in the same way.
Use of such words in Nato also
Not only the Indian Army, NATO also uses this phonetic alphabet. According to the report of the Security Journal, NATO started using these alphabets to avoid similar sound words and wrong messages. They are even used in Aviation Industry and Emergency Service. In this episode, in the year 1955, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) created a booklet so that such vocabulary can be used worldwide.
In the year 1956, NATO also started using the advanced version of this booklet to increase the trend of phonetic alphabet in all member countries and make communication easier. However, before this, such coding was used during the military operation of first and second World War. But then there was no one standard, further it was further improved and it has now been updated in terms of global practice.