Probably yes, those are the letters in GPS coordinates they might need to input. However, the standard with global coordinates as two floating point values is that ā and āŗ are positive while ā and ā are negative so they could just use that.
Anyway, they should have just used a QWERTY keyboard and added an extra N on top for the logical layout of
I think the current layout cannot be much worse. The positions of the letters don't correspond to cardinal directions at all. In a combat scenario, you don't want to type on a non-standard keypad. To make the NWES keys stand out as they should, they could be mildly arrow-shaped like ā or ā. Keys are not easily confused if they have special shapes.