NATO Phonetic Alphabet Translator

Spell any word the way pilots, air traffic controllers, and radio operators do — with the ICAO spelling alphabet (the alphabet commonly called "NATO"): Alfa for A, Bravo for B, Charlie for C, and so on. Live as you type, digits 0–9 included (One, Two, … Niner). Switch the direction to decode a code-word sequence back into text. Nothing leaves the browser.

Direction — text → code words
Options
Punctuation
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Reference click a row to load it
About the NATO / ICAO alphabet
  • The phonetic alphabet was developed in the 1950s by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and adopted by NATO, the ITU, the IMO, and most national aviation authorities. It is designed so every code word is unambiguous over a noisy radio channel — the consonants and vowel patterns are deliberately distinct.
  • It ships with 26 code words for the letters A–Z and 10 for the digits 0–9. We use the canonical ICAO spellings: Alfa, Juliett, X-ray, and Niner for 9 (the trailing er avoids confusion with the German nein over a noisy channel).
  • Tag mode wraps punctuation in <comma>, <space>, <slash>, and so on. The decoder recognises those tags, so tag mode round-trips a string exactly — useful when you need to spell a URL or a serial number over the radio.
  • Keep mode (the default) is the everyday "spelling a callsign" experience: punctuation stays put, code words are separated by single spaces.
  • Drop mode strips everything but letters and digits, which gives a tight column of code words.
  • The decoder is forgiving. It accepts Alpha / Alfa, Juliet / Juliett, Nine / Niner, and Five / Fife. Unknown tokens are reported in the status line rather than guessed at.
  • Everything runs in your browser. The alphabet, the text, and the code words never leave this tab.