Covenant Battle Calendar (Matt-256)

The Covenant Battle Calendar is the military counterpart to the. Like its human counterpart, the Battle Calendar assists in maintaining chronological coordination between military forces in different systems with different measures of time.

Overview
The calendar is based on the calendar, which in turn was based on the  calendar, albeit with some minor adjustments to more accurately fit the day and night cycles of the  and  homeworlds. The calendars of other member species were never taken into account – which could on occasion pose problems with soldiers in particular, who had been conditioned by the erratic day/night cycles of their homeworld to also adopt erratic sleeping habits, often subconsciously prompting them to take naps at inopportune times.

The most basic unit of time used in the calendar (while smaller units, such as fractions – roughly equal to two seconds on Earth – and sub-units – roughly equal to six Earth minutes - exist and are used in other contexts, they are usually not used in the calendar) is the (not to be confused with the other type of “unit”, which is used for measurement). The unit is comparable to an hour on Earth.

Next comes the, which is based on High Charity’s artificial day and night cycle (in turn based on the cycles on ). One cycle consists of 360 units, which makes it the equivalent of 15 days on the human Military Calendar. In turn, 12 cycles (with an additional 63 units added to the final cycle to make up for error margins in the time calculations, much like the human usage of “leap years”) make up a, which can be compared to half a year on Earth (new revolutions begin on the Covenant equivalents of January 17 and July 19), though since an orbit (the Covenant scientific term for a year) consists of four revolutions, revolutions are technically the equivalent of quarters rather than half-years. Orbits, however, are almost never used in the Battle Calendar (usually it’s reserved for strictly astrological purposes).

Lastly, the calendar usually specifies the current, though in some instances the Age (as well as the revolution) is omitted from the calendar – typically during military operations when complete accuracy isn’t desirable or particularly time-effective. As logs from such times are usually saved for archiving, age and revolution can usually be specified retroactively, meaning such simplification in the field is normally not an issue.

While the Battle Calendar continued to be used even after the, the use of Ages was often dropped, particularly by the Sangheili, after most of the Covenant religion was proven false, and subsequently replaced with orbits. However, the calendar continued to be used in an unchanged format by, as well as a few splinter factions led by.

Example
Seventh Cycle, 48 Units, 54th Revolution of the 9th Age of Reclamation = November 3, 2552

Internal

 * Operation: DIVINE SON