US Mil Runs exercise simulating a CME event and Amateur Radio ops

Admins, if this is inappropriate please let me know. I know it's a fine line from supporting SM and at the same time supporting mine. Please let me know where its is and if I have crossed it.

I have posted an article about an upcoming event on the PH Blog page.
Its about an upcoming US MIL and amateur radio ops running a simulation on a CME orig posted on ARRL.com

Well at least the government is looking at real life examples of things that could change life as we know it. The US Military is conducting an exercise with members of the Amateur Radio Community to help us understand what we need to do before a CME or EMP event to protect our communications capabilities to help with what I would assume would be nation wide comms in a Post event world.

How to stop a Coronal Mass Ejection ending civilisation as we know it

 

I think that's great practice for something that is a surprisingly real threat. Are you taking part in the exercise?

Like that article said, it only takes one Mass Ejection and we could all be sent hurdling back 500 years. I'm all for the reliving the simple ways of life, but I do like my modern amenities like sterile hospital rooms, medicine, the internet. The more prep, the better!

 

Thanks BTP. Thats what I thought. Although PH forum has a preparedness section it mostly about Amateur Radio amd SHTF comms. You guys do a great job, way beete than SB amd I dont have any wish to duplicate that on PH.

I have links here on PH and plan to stay in my "Swin Lane".

I may take part, it depends on my work schedule since I spend 2-3+ weeks on the road its hard to plan time to be by a radio

I will follow the discussion and results if they post it if I can be part of it.

I have sent a request for info and I will post what I find out.

 

Well the exercise came and went. i never got an answer to my request to take part. Today I got an email saying that due to logistics of setting up the exercise over 30 hams also did not get emails with details.

Here is the email from today from Paul English
mars.exercises@gmail.com

Fellow Amateur Radio Operators,

Thanks to everyone who was able to participate in the DOD-MARS-Amateur Radio Exercise from 8-10 Nov. We appreciate your support and efforts in helping to achieve the training objective of contacting as many of the 3,142 US counties during this exercise via radio only means. We are still compiling the results of how many counties were contacted.

I am now collecting After Action Report comments and recommendations for how to improve our processes of reaching out to the amateur radio community during these types of exercises.

I have already received a few comments and am interested to hear if there are other comments or recommendations, both good and bad, for how to improve this process.

Here are my thoughts on what I need to improve:

1. We need to better integrate MARS operators into their local ARES/RACES organizations locally, so they already know when and where your nets regularly meet and how to get ahold of you. We are also considering the need to plan for MARS operators to monitor specific RACES CPG 1-15 frequencies, the 5MHz interop channels, or maybe the HF-ALE channels, then announce monitoring windows and specific frequencies where we can be reached.

2. The way I structured the coordinating correspondence for the exercise was too cumbersome. This required an initial coordination email from me to you and copied a MARS Region Director who then had to appoint someone to contact you and then figure out when and where your regularly scheduled nets operate. I know in some cases, the follow on linkup didn't occur due to a number of factors. The initial email should contain the information from #1 above to give you certainty from the outset of what the link up plan will be. For those that were not contacted, I apologize for my lack of a more succinct plan for how to do this coordination.

3. Because of the way I structured the coordination, I had to cut off coordination several days prior to Startex which left at least 30 amateur Radio Operators out of the exercise. I need to have a better coordination plan so there is no cutoff - so that if you are able to participate, just jump in and contribute.

Again, thanks for your interest in this exercise. My hope is that we can continue to improve this process and make coordination for these types of exercise more routine. I also want to consider scheduling a MARS exercise in conjunction with already established amateur radio exercises such as annual simulated emergency test exercise to give us more opportunities to train together in the future.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

v/r

Paul