Build your own Military Symbology

MAJ Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:39:52 -0400

Greetings All,

BLUF: Joint military symbology explorer (http://explorer.milsymb.net/#/home) is a website where you can create, save, and explore military standard symbology. It is currently evolving as the data that it uses grows, but it's still a great asset for those of you looking to understand or create standard military symbols.

The Background:
With the release of MIL-STD-2525D Common Warfighting Symbology (the DOD standard that drives service standards like the Army's ADRP 1-02), comes a new way of graphically representing entities on a map. This new "a-la-carte" symbology may be difficult to understand at first, but the standard's increased agility makes it much easier to create the symbols we need to map.

ESRI is a GIS company that has long supported the DOD, and has created GIS technology used everywhere from FBCB2, CPOF, DCGS-A, and a multitude of other systems. ESRI developed and is maintaining the Joint Military Symbology Markup Language (JMSML), an open-source digitization of MIL-STD-2525D, developed jointly between DOD's Symbology Standards Management Committee and NATO's Joint Symbology Panel.

Here is the JMSML repository link:
https://github.com/Esri/joint-military-symbology-xml

The Joint military symbology explorer is a prime example of how open-source coding can benefit everyone. A researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment created this website as an experiment.

Known issues:
Since the JMSML has trouble depicting Line and Area control measures (it's a question of creating the graphics to render them correctly), that part of the Joint symbology explorer may have some issues.

I hope you all find this helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions. I've also posted this to milSuite, and you can find that link here: https://www.milsuite.mil/book/groups/army-marine-corps-terminology/blog/2015/03/17/the-joint-military-symbology-explorer

Have a great day everyone!

Response by SGT Nia Chiaraluce made Mar 25 at 2015 11:47 AM

SGT Nia Chiaraluce — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:47:25 -0400

I am glad to see what they have done with capability Sir. Being signal the most difficult thing to explain to Commanders is that we had no way to uniquely identify them on a BFT overlay; now we do. This also opens up the ability to identify Task Force Teams or QRF teams.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made May 26 at 2015 6:28 PM

CPT Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 26 May 2015 18:28:04 -0400

Holy cow this is Awesome. I wish I found this when I was at IBOLC. Thanks so much.

Response by CPT Aaron Kletzing made Jun 15 at 2022 12:10 AM

CPT Aaron Kletzing — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 00:10:37 -0400

Wow, this is insane. Can’t believe someone was able to create this from how complex this stuff can be!