NATO Joint Military Symbology
Originally published in 1986 as Allied Procedural Publication 6 (APP-6), NATO Military Symbols for Land Based Systems, the standard has evolved over the years and is currently in its fifth version (APP-6D).
The first basic military map symbols began to be used by western armies in the decades following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
With the formation of NATO in 1949, the US Army system was standardized and adapted, with different shapes for friendly (blue rectangle), hostile (red diamond) and unknown (yellow quatrefoil) forces.
The APP-6A standard provides common operational symbology along with details on their display and plotting to ensure the compatibility, and to the greatest extent possible, the interoperability of NATO land component command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence (C4I) systems, development, operations, and training.
All sorts of graphical and textual modifiers may surround them, specifying categories, quantities, dates, direction of movement, etc.
Tactical graphics represent operational information that cannot be presented via icon-based symbols alone: unit boundaries, special area designations, and other unique markings related to battlespace geometry and necessary for battlefield planning and management.
The signals intelligence and military operations other than war symbology sets stand apart from Units, Equipment, and Installations although they obey the same conventions (i.e., they consist of framed symbols associated to points on the map).
The frame provides a visual indication of the affiliation, battle dimension, and status of an operational object.
The use of shape and colour is redundant, allowing the symbology to be used under less-than-ideal conditions such as a monochrome red display to preserve the operator's night vision.
If the fill is assigned a colour, it provides an enhanced (redundant) presentation of information about the affiliation of the object.
The icons themselves, finally, can be understood as combinations of elementary glyphs that use simple composition rules, in a manner reminiscent of some ideographic writing systems such as Chinese.
The standard, however, still attempts to provide an "exhaustive" listing of possible icons instead of laying out a dictionary of component glyphs.
When rendering symbols with the fill off, APP-6A calls for a monochrome frame and icon (usually black or in accordance with the affiliation colour).
NATO symbols can also be rendered with fill off using a frame coloured according to affiliation and a black icon,[2] though this is not defined in any APP-6 standard.
Likewise, a landing craft whose primary mission is ferrying personnel or equipment to and from shore is a maritime unit and is represented in the sea surface dimension.
The SOF (special operations forces) are assigned their own battle dimension because they typically can operate across several domains (air, ground, sea surface and subsurface) in the course of a single mission; the frames are the same as for the ground (unit) battle dimension.
The icon is the innermost part of a symbol which, when displayed, provides an abstract pictorial or alphanumeric representation of an operational object.
APP-6(A) remained unchanged as work on harmonizing it with ADatP-3, NATO Message Text Formatting System was carried out.
With the ratification and promulgation of APP-6(B) in 2008, the named was changed to NATO Military Symbology to better reflect the nature of the publication.
The US military required new symbols to support ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the pace of change between APP-6 and MIL-STD-2525 remained uneven until 2009.
The goal of both groups is to develop comprehensive joint military symbology that is common to both organizations to the greatest extent possible.
