Question about coordinate formats

[Jasonmoofang]

So I'm up to mission 12 now and have played a number of missions where target coordinates are provided on the fly. Mission 9 was a nasty but neat surprise when the SEALs gave coordinates in DMS instead of the hornet's default DDM format. However he's my question! In a vacuum, how would I know which format a given coordinate is? Bowser in Mission 3 appeared to give DDM coordinates as part of a nineline talk on, and Venom, apparently in the same kind of nineline talk on, gave DMS coordinates. And then in mission 11 Spade flight also gave, I believe, DMS coordinates for the JSOW targets, without actually saying or apparently indicating that it is DMS.

How is a pilot supposed to know which one he/she is being given?

[Frederf]

Latitude and longitude when written are understood by specific symbols which give context to the numerical digits. Without those symbols the format is undefined and essentially meaningless. Spoken over the radio, those symbols become verbalized as words. 12° 34' 29.9'' N isn't "one two three four two niner niner" as that would not have a definite meaning. It would be spoken according to the appropriate radiotelephone operations handbook as "one two degrees, three four minutes, two niner decimal niner seconds north" or something very similar.

[Jasonmoofang]

Thanks, that would make sense. But in these missions they don't seem to be giving coordinates non-ambiguously, which is why I was wondering. In particular Bowser and Venom's ninelines don't apparently say the coordinates differently, to my memory, and yet needed to be treated differently.

[weasel1088]

I too was confused by this. I am pretty sure in mission 11 spade effectively said something like "N 26 26 53 90, E 57 03 29 70 elevation 33' " which I interpreted to be N26°26'53.90" E57°03'29.70" Elevation 33'. Dropped 2 JSOWs on two different coordinates and neither got a hit (which may be how the mission is supposed to go since I was still able to complete it successfully). In any case, I dont necessarily mind the different coordinates, but just as Jasonmoofang said, I just want it to be clear which to use.