[Alexandria Radio Club Reflector] FW: DoD/MARS Radio Exercise

Fri Nov 1 13:58:28 EDT 2019

If your free this may be an interesting exercise.

73 Rick

N4ASX

From: AFA3GK (AFS34C) <afa3gk at shentel.net> 
Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 9:29 AM
Cc: USAF MARS 3RD COMMUNICATIONS WING CDR <wb4yvo at verizon.net>; AFW3O -
Randy Maurui <wa3hlp at ptd.net>; AFW3E <jhunley at gmail.com>
Subject: DoD/MARS Radio Exercise

GM All,

This message is being sent to about 84 people and I am using the  Bcc method
so that your email addresses are not exposed.

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FOLLOWS//////////////////////////////////////////////////

Hello,

My name is Gerald (Jerry) Knowlton and I am the State Air Force MARS
Director for Virginia. I am sending this email because of an upcoming Air
Force/Army MARS Communications exercise that involves an interaction with
amateur radio stations.

Dr. Joe Palsa, ARRL Virginia Section Manager, and I have agreed to consider
this exercise as a joint venture between the MARS organization and the
various ARES Coordinators for this exercise., hence this email to you. You
can read more about this upcoming event by going to the ARRL website at this
URL:
http://www.arrl.org/news/mars-members-to-work-with-radio-amateurs-during-set
-and-dod-comex-19-4

You may remember that the MARS organization mission of the past years dealt
mostly with providing a means of our military troops to communicate
(MARSGRAMS - messages of 25 words or less) back home to loved ones. it was a
mission that was really in force during the Vietnam War, but times have now
changed. MASRSGRAMs, while still valid today, are no longer being used. they
have been replaced by the internet, worldwide phone service and other
instant communications. The mission of MARS, therefore, has been replaced
with real-world situational awareness within the United States for the DoD.

What is our mission now. The mission is about a "really bad day" in which
the internet is not available within a large number of regions and all other
forms of communications are non- existent. Such an event would leave the DoD
literally blind and deaf until they could either restore services or rapidly
deploy communications teams. Until that happens, then they will need "eyes
and ears" on the ground. That is where we, MARS and radio amateurs come into
the picture.

AF and Army MARS organizations have been training for the past three or so
years in preparing for the "really bad day" to occur with nationwide
exercises and daily nets. 

The DoD have realized that the thirty people in Virginia AF and Army MARS
organization are not going to be able to provide the DoD a good situational
awareness of a statewide or even a multi-regional area incident

Right now, in the daily MARS training scenarios, they are practicing passing
weather reports from airports and county operational status reports. With 30
active MARS members, they would be responsible for weather reports from
about 84 airports with AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation Systems) and 95
counties and 38 independent cities operational status. 

 Normally, MARS membeers could get this information from the Internet,
email, phone etc., but remember, a DoD definition of a really "bad day" is
when none of these services exist. Getting the information that the DoD
would need means listening to airport AM AWOS broadcasts by using the
aircraft band and AM and people going to county/city government offices. The
only seemly reliable communications available on this "bad day" would
probably be HF radio using NVIS propagation and VHF radios, with HF being
the primary mode.

This is where the amateur radio community enters the picture. On the "bad
day", The MARS organization is going to need people to tune in and listen to
local airports who have AWOS capability. they will a;sp need people to go to
the county seats and asked a series of questions. All reports will then be
sent back to a MARS member who will be located on one of the five channels
in the 60-meter band.

There will be MARS members, who have been assigned to "watch" a respective
channel, will receive, compile and package up those reports from the amateur
radio community and other MARS members. MARS members would then send the
reports back to their designated headquarters using long haul HF circuits. 

So, there are some questions that must be asked and answered first before we
move on:

1.	Would the amateur radio community be willing to participate? We
don't know that answer but by initially involving the coordinators of the
ARES service here in Virginia, confidence is much higher that the amateur
radio community will participate.
2.	How would an amateur radio communicate with a MARS station. We would
use the five channels in the 60-meter band which is where both government
users (primary) and amateur radio (secondary) can communicate with each
other. 
3.	What would the mode of emissions be? It would be both voice and MT63
(a digital package in FLIDigi). Initially, upper leadership wanted to push
out a M110 package to amateur operators but there was not enough time for
it. It's difficult to install and has "too many moving parts".  MT63 is
something that can be installed easily, if not already. After the exercise,
we can help people install the M110 package
4.	How would the DoD communicate their needs or requirements to MARS
and amateur radios?  Two ways.

a.	The DoD would first use WWV and WWVH facilities to make
announcements about the exercise and any further notifications in a
broadcast ten minutes after the start of each hour. Those messages would
continue and change until the end of the exercise. In fact, WWV is now
broadcasting a message (remember, it will be ten minutes after the hour).
b.	MARS headquarters and select MARS stations would later in the
exercise make a digital broadcast outlining specific of the exercise using
the M110 protocol on channel one of the 60-meter band.  Locally or
regionally, any MARS station would then copy the M110 transmission and send
it out over channel two using MT-63 2000L with the center tune at 1000hz. If
the M110 transmission, was changed over to be sent on channel two, then we
would use channel one. As of right now, no one in Virginia knows the exact
contents of the  message from the DoD will contain.

5.	What is the schedule? We only have this information and it may get
expanded or changed as we approach the exercise start time.

a.	The exercise starts on Nov. 3rd at 8:00am. There is no amateur radio
involvement at this time.
b.	On Nov. 6th at 8:01 pm to Nov. 16th at 8:00 am. We will have
sustained operations with amateur radio support. At the moment, I have no
idea what that means and probably will not know until at least Nov. 3rd.
When we know though, we will inform you by email of the evolving nature of
the exercise.
c.	On Nov. 16th at 11:01pm, the DoD 60-meter M110 broadcast on channel
three will start and last until 11:30pm. Even though it does not say so, I
imagine that DoD will just be repeating the message over and over again will
11:30PM. Local MARS will repeat the message on channel three
d.	On Nov. 16th at 11:30PM through Nov. 18th 7:59pm, we will start and
continuously take messages that relate to the requirements of DoD from the
amateur community.
e.	The exercise will end at Nov 18th 7:59pm

So, I think we are going to learn a lot from this exercise and I also
believe that the DoD is going to continue to develop the use of amateurs
during its' future exercises. Again, you can also learn more about this
exercise by reading an article on the ARRL web site at this URL:
http://www.arrl.org/news/mars-members-to-work-with-radio-amateurs-during-set
-and-dod-comex-19-4

You can also reach me by email at afa3gk at shentel.net
<mailto:afa3gk at shentel.net>  or by phone 540-583-0475. If I don't pick up ,
please leave a message. 

Thank you for sticking with me on this very long email. I am looking forward
to meeting you on the air soon

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Best regards,

Jerry Knowlton, Commander

AFMARS 34th Comm. Group GC