Fighter Pilots and Submarine Officers way of Representing Vectors?

Question

FIghter pilots and submarine officers have their own way of representing vectors, and they do it three dimensions. Their survival depends on understanding vector approaches instead of saying an airplane is travelling of 400km/hr westward they usually say something like "Bogeys 10 click at 5'o clock high" "check your sives" or "unidentified object detected at 75 mark 8". How do these people represet magnitude and direction?

Answer 1

Fighters use o' clocks to measure relative bearing. They refer to a clockface where 12:00 is dead ahead. 3:00 is to the right (starboard). 6:00 is right behind you (ie, check your six). 9:00 is to the left (port).

Subs and ships (and often planes) generally use relative bearing to accomplish the same thing as the clocks. 000 is dead ahead. 090 is to starboard. 180 is astern. 270 is to port. True bearing is like relative bearing, but it doesn't change when the ship turns. 000 is north. 090 is east. 180 is south. 270 is west.

High, medium, and low refer to relative altitude.

Clicks are just short for kilometers. Velocities are most often expressed as a direction (true or relative) and magnitude (usually in knots or nautical miles per hour).

Answer 2

They are using a modified or moving spherical coordinate system. The radial distance to a point from an origin at their location is given in "clicks" and the zenith angle is measured from the positive vertical z-axis is visualized as a clock face. The azimuth angle from the positive x-axis is always zero, with the x axis horizontal and positive in the direction of motion projected on the horizontal plane.