The Military Grid Reference System is the geographic standard used by the United States Armed Forces and NATO for locating any point on the earth with a 2 to 10 character geocode. A two digit code implies a precision of 10km and a ten digit code corresponds to a 1m precision with intermediate steps of 1km, 100m, and 10m. It is always displayed in an even number of characters preceded by an alpha-numeric code describing the larger Earth area to which it belongs.
For instance 38 S MC12345678 would be read as
Section: 38 Sub Section: S Map Section: MC Map Point: 12345678
The map point is broken down further into to equally sized parts of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 digits. In this example it would be:
1234 and 5678
Like any mapping standard you read from West to East first, then from South to North. So 1234 would be your Latitudinal equivalent and 5678 would be your longitudinal equivalent.
It is a derivative of the Universal Transverse Mercator mapping system.
External links
- A list of coordinate systems - by Prof. Peter H. Dana at the Univ. of Colorado