Military Standard Time (also called MST) is the official name of the UNSC's 2400 hour timekeeping system. The Military Standard time system solves the problems of standardizing time throughout the UNSC space and is used in conjunction with the Military Calendar.

Purpose

A day is defined as the time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis exactly one time. However, most planets do not spin at the same speeds, so once the UNSC began to colonize other worlds, the problem emerged that the definition of "years" and "days" became entirely dependent on the planet.

For example, one "day" on Earth is approximately 24 hours, but one "day" on Reach is 27 hours. The Military Calendar answers the problem of how to define a year, while Military Standard Time answers the problem of how to uniformly define a day.

Despite MST being the universal standard, some military forces stationed on Reach apparently followed the local 27-hour clock alongside the Military Calendar. The same may be true to other colonies as well.

Procedure

There are apparently two ways the Military Standard Calendar is shown.

The most common is a standardized 2400 hour system. This system is used in most timekeeping objects, such as helmet recorders, UNSC watches and clocks. (It was also used at the beginning of each chapter of the five Halo books and all games). This system is based on the rotation of Earth; 2400 hours most likely corresponds to a standard Earth day (Where 0000 is midnight and 1200 is noon).

A second, more uncommon measure is only thought of as a "month percentage" time. It has never been explained and can only be inferred as recording the percentage of a month that has passed on the Military Calendar. An example of when this is used is on the UNSC Astrophysics papers, each is dated according to this system. The one made by SPARTAN-084 was published on May 097 and it can only be assumed that this refers to the end of may, after 97% of the month has passed according to the Gregorian Calendar used on Earth.

Times

• 0000 hours - 12am
• 0100 hours - 1am
• 0200 hours - 2am
• 0300 hours - 3am
• 0400 hours - 4am
• 0500 hours - 5am
• 0600 hours - 6am
• 0700 hours - 7am
• 0800 hours - 8am
• 0900 hours - 9am
• 1000 hours - 10am
• 1100 hours - 11am
• 1200 hours - 12pm
• 1300 hours - 1pm
• 1400 hours - 2pm
• 1500 hours - 3pm
• 1600 hours - 4pm
• 1700 hours - 5pm
• 1800 hours - 6pm
• 1900 hours - 7pm
• 2000 hours - 8pm
• 2100 hours - 9pm
• 2200 hours - 10pm
• 2300 hours - 11pm

• 0100 hours would be said as zero one hundred hours.
• 0115 hours would be said as zero one fifteen hours.
• 1000 hours would be said as ten hundred hours.
• 1015 hours would be said as ten fifteen hours.
• 0000 hours would be said as zero hundred hours.
• 0015 hours would be said as zero fifteen hours.