Convert Mil to Degree instantly.
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Conversion Result
1 mil = 0.05625 °
A forward observer shoots an azimuth to a ridgeline with a lensatic compass and reads 4,600 mils. The topo app on her phone, the plotting software back at the fire direction center, and the survey drawing for the access road all speak in degrees. She needs one number, not three. 4,600 × 0.05625 = 258.75°. That is the entire job of this converter.
The same conversion shows up far outside gunnery. A land surveyor inherits a legacy traverse logged in mils. A machinist gets a fixture drawing that calls out a 200-mil rotation and needs 11.25° on a rotary table. A rifle shooter dials 3.4 mils of elevation and wants to know how many degrees of barrel rise that really is (0.19°). Anywhere a mil-graduated instrument meets a degree-graduated one, this is the bridge.
The NATO mil divides a full circle into 6,400 parts instead of 360. So one mil is 360 ÷ 6400 = 0.05625°, and one degree is 6400 ÷ 360 = 17.7778 mils. Multiply mils by 0.05625 to get degrees; multiply degrees by 17.7778 to go back. Nothing else is involved — no trigonometry, no distance, no scaling.
A true milliradian is one thousandth of a radian, and a circle holds 2π × 1000 ≈ 6,283.19 of them. That is the number that makes the famous field shortcut work: 1 mil subtends 1 metre at 1,000 metres. Artillery rounded 6,283 up to 6,400 because 6,400 divides cleanly by 2, 4, 8, 16 and 100 — you can quarter a circle in your head under fire. The rounding costs about 1.9%, which is invisible on a compass card and very visible in a long-range ranging formula.
Mils are written mil, mils, m, or with a leading zero-padded four-digit azimuth (0450, 4600). True milliradians are written mrad or MRAD. Scope makers muddy this badly: a turret stamped “MIL” is almost always 6,283-per-circle mrad, not the 6,400 NATO mil. Minutes of arc (MOA) are a third system entirely — 1/60 of a degree, so one NATO mil equals 3.375 MOA.
Exact values at 0.05625° per mil. MOA column included because most scope turrets and range cards mix the two.
| Mils (NATO) | Degrees | MOA | Field meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.05625° | 3.375 | Smallest click on many mil-adjust scopes is 0.1 mil |
| 10 | 0.5625° | 33.75 | ≈ 10 m of lateral offset at 1,000 m |
| 100 | 5.625° | 337.5 | A typical wind/lead correction band |
| 400 | 22.5° | 1,350 | One eighth of a full turn |
| 800 | 45° | 2,700 | Half of a right angle |
| 1,600 | 90° | 5,400 | Right angle — one quadrant |
| 3,200 | 180° | 10,800 | Back-azimuth: add or subtract 3,200 mils |
| 4,800 | 270° | 16,200 | Three quarters of a turn |
| 6,400 | 360° | 21,600 | Full circle in the NATO mil system |
| System | Mils per circle | 1 mil = | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|
| NATO mil (this tool) | 6,400 | 0.05625° | US/NATO artillery, land nav, mil-dot and MRAD-marked optics sold as “mil” |
| True milliradian (mrad) | 6,283.19 | 0.0572958° | The mathematical radian/1000. Ranging math, laser divergence, surveying |
| Warsaw Pact / USSR mil | 6,000 | 0.06° | Former Soviet-pattern gunnery and optics (PSO-1 reticles) |
| Swedish streck | 6,300 | 0.0571° | Swedish artillery and legacy compasses |
This converter uses the NATO 6,400-mil circle. If your source is mrad or a 6,000-mil instrument, use the matching converter instead — the 1.9% and 6.7% offsets are real.
The math here is exact. Multiplying by 0.05625 is a closed-form unit conversion with no estimation, no model, and no assumptions. Results are limited only by JavaScript double-precision floating point, which is far finer than any instrument you will read a mil from.
Your measurement is not exact. A lensatic compass is typically graduated to 20 mils and readable to about ±10 mils (±0.56°). Magnetic declination, nearby steel, vehicle bodies, and power lines can shift a needle by tens of mils. A perfectly converted number carries every bit of error that was in the reading you typed in.
Privacy: every calculation runs locally in your browser. No azimuth, coordinate, or input value is transmitted to a server, logged, or stored.
Caveat: this converter is a units tool, not a fire-control, navigation, or survey system. Do not use it as the sole authority for gunnery data, aviation, land boundaries, or any safety-critical bearing. Where a standard, statute, or standard operating procedure governs the work, that document — and a qualified professional applying it — takes precedence over any number on this page.
This converter uses the standard NATO mil convention where a full circle is divided into 6,400 mils. Since one full circle is 360°, 1 mil equals 0.05625°.
To convert mils to degrees, multiply the mil value by 360 / 6400, or 0.05625. To convert degrees back to mils, divide the degree value by 0.05625.
For example, 1,600 mils equals 90°, 3,200 mils equals 180°, and 6,400 mils equals 360°.
Mils and degrees use different circle divisions, so treating the values as equal creates large bearing and elevation errors. Accurate conversion is useful when comparing military, surveying, navigation, mapping, and targeting references with standard degree measurements.
Common questions about the mil to ° Converter
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