Originally Posted by
Roadster280
If everyone's watch is on the same time, plus or minus a second, I suppose that's fine, so long as everyone's on the same reference. But it's not much good if everyone on a specific air force mission is on one time reference, and the Navy & Army are on another (assuming there's interaction). The Navy won't have access to TIM, and even if they did, they'd use a satellite to get there, and that will throw it off. GPS would seem to be the right system for the Navy.
Then there's the problem of machine timekeeping. If one system lags or leads another, then messages arrive out of sequence, or before "now". If their internal clocks run at different rates, then even though they may be set at the same initial start point, one may race compared with another. This is the purpose of "leap seconds", although in telecom systems, it is much finer granularity.
I just find it hard to believe that if there's two Typhoons on QRA, in the absence of anything else, the crews set their watches by an antiquated, inherently poorly granular audio system (i.e. TIM), and the aircraft themselves are on separate clocks. Perhaps this isn't the case, and it's an OPSEC issue. I do hope so.
And of course those Typhoons intercept an aircraft from half a world away and . . .
In an ideal world . . .
Then the ultimate question, have you ever tried to set up a STANAG? Have you read all the exceptions and opt outs at the front of an ATP?
Finally, to state everyone has xyz is an error. Some aircraft or systems somewhere can be guaranteed to be on a different time standard with different equipment.