[TMRA] Test MARS-ARES Interoperability

[Stephen Bellner]

Late October Exercise to Test MARS-ARES Interoperability

US Army and Air Force Military Auxiliary Radio Service (MARS) stations 
will participate in a 48-hour nationwide contingency communication 
exercise on October 27 and 28 as part of an effort to develop greater 
cooperation between the Department of Defense (DoD) sponsored MARS 
program and the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). MARS is 
encouraging its members to discuss communication interoperability in 
advance of the exercise with their ARES section and district or local 
emergency coordinators.
"This communications exercise is sponsored by the DoD to provide MARS 
operators the opportunity to develop and train interoperability 
procedures with their state/local ARES emergency coordinators and their 
Amateur Radio colleagues," explained Army MARS Program Manager Paul 
English, WD8DBY. He told ARRL that the DoD/MARS exercise has "full 
participation" from Army and Air Force MARS, and that he anticipates 
that some individual Navy MARS members may participate as well.
The plan calls for MARS members, using their Amateur Radio call signs 
and operating on amateur frequencies, to establish two-way communication 
with ARES leadership or members in as many US counties as possible by 
using VHF/UHF simplex channels or local repeaters or near vertical 
incidence skywave (NVIS) propagation on HF. "The contact can be with any 
amateur in the county, if an ARES member or leader is not available," 
English added.
"Ultimately we would like the MARS operator to join an existing ARES 
net, if one is operational during the exercise," English said. If no net 
is available, MARS members should come up on local repeaters or check 
into HF traffic nets to see what amateurs are available and to determine 
their counties. "We want to use existing net times and frequencies to 
the extent possible," English continued. "Any mode of operation is fine."
Only one ARES/Amateur Radio contact per county is needed, but more are 
okay. The contact must be person to person and cannot rely on 
Internet-linked repeaters, Internet connectivity systems, or 
store-and-forward e-mail systems, such as /Winlink/ 
<http://www.winlink.org/>, English said.
The information exchange requested from ARES for each county is the 
county name and the county Federal Information Processing Standards 
(FIPS <https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/codes/cou.html>) code, if 
available.
There are two preferred windows of opportunity to conduct the 
interoperability exercise. These are from 1201 to 1800 UTC on October 
27, and from 0001 to 0600 UTC on October 28.
Contact <mailto:paul.a.english.civ at mail.mil> Paul English, WD8DBY, for 
more information. - /Thanks to the ARRL Letter/