[MilCom] Commander's Nets?

[Ken]

Remember the old days when the top commanders on a base would carry those 
"bricks" and would basically call the base operator who would than patch 
them into a base extension # or any other number in the world....  Well 
locally it's been MANY years since I've heard any activity on these so 
called commander's nets....  My guess is that most of these comms are now 
via digital cellphones rather than radio.   Recently when I was on the USAF 
publication website, one of the comm planning regs for comm authorization 
requests had a cellphone usage differentiated between administrative and 
operations requiring secure transmissions, so I have to wonder if perhaps 
there's some special military grade cellphones (portables & mobiles) that 
are actually capable of encrypting the communications.

Has anyone else been able to monitor the typical commander's nets phone 
patches or a special commander's net?   I would still assume that most base 
& wing commander's have access to portables/mobiles that will operate on 
various base support frequencies, but I'm not sure if there still is a 
"commander's net" so to speak......

Ken