NATO phonetic alphabet by those who exchange voice messages by radio or telephone, regardless of language differences or the quality of the communication channel. The 26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order as follows: , Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, , Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Strict adherence to the prescribed spelling words is required in order to avoid the problems of confusion that the spelling alphabet is designed to overcome. As noted in a
Allied Military phonetic spelling alphabets a modified form of the "International Code of Signals". Because the latter allows messages to be spelled via flags or Morse code, it naturally named the code words used to spell out messages by "voice" its "phonetic alphabet". The name "NATO phonetic alphabet" became widespread because the signals used to facilitate the naval communications and tactics of NATO have become global. However, ATP-1 is marked "NATO Confidential" (or the lower "NATO Restricted") so it is not available publicly. Nevertheless, a NATO unclassified version of the document is provided to foreign, even hostile, militaries, even though they are not allowed to