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Alexandria, La. - Hoping to avoid the communications breakdown it experienced during Hurricane Katrina, the Army has turned to mobile command vehicles built from the ground up to coordinate with first responders in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav.

During Katrina, Defense Department units had difficulty communicating with state and local emergency workers because it did not have radio equipment that was interoperable with those that first responders used. The Army also needed to connect to classified and unclassified military networks, and all this capability had to be easy to transport.

So, the Army contracted with the Wolf Coach division for mobile command vehicles, the result of which are 33-foot trucks equipped with 2.6 meter satellite dishes. The vehicles include a system called Sentinel, which provides the Army North Operational Command Post here with 2 megabytes of connectivity per second through a commercial satellite connection provided by Segovia IP of Herndon, Va. The Army now operates 23 mobile command vehicles.

Sentinel also provides a suite of radios that communicate on all VHF and UHF radio frequencies that first responders use. It's also equipped with an analog bridge from the JPS Communications division of Raytheon Co. so it can connect with up to 24 disparate radio systems, according to Matt Hopper, an Army civilian telecommunications specialist deployed with the Army North Operational Command post.

The Sentinel system supports connectivity for 55 users connected to the Defense's unclassified network and another 30 users connected to the Defense classified network. The network also supports voice and data connections and video teleconferencing.

Because the bandwidth provided to the command post is less than the average high-speed Internet connection -- and supports many more users -- workers were instructed to practice "digital rules of engagement" on files they sent and received over the network. Hopper said text is the preferred medium of expression rather than PowerPoint presentations, which take much longer to send.

The Sentinel system proved useful when Army North set up the command post in a hangar at an industrial park and local airport here, Hopper said. The buildings had three working telephone lines, which were not enough to support the organization's 120 people.

As the winds from Gustav picked up on Monday, Hopper had to shut down Sentinel and park it in a safe location. But Lt. Col. William Darby, the command sergeant at the command post, said they still were able to communicate by plugging one of its air cards from Verizon Wireless to access the Defense unclassified network at a speed of about 200 kilobits per second over a high-speed cellular network.

Army North has four Sentinel systems designed to support a command post like the one in Alexandria and 19 smaller units housed in SUVs that have satellite dishes that are less than 1 meter and support Defense coordinating officers who work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

While Col. Laverm Young, the coordinating officer deployed to Baton Rouge, praised the communications capabilities of the new vehicles, he said one addition was needed: a high-frequency radio system capable of communicating with amateur radio operators, who often have the only radios operating after a disaster.

COMMENTS

• Glad to see the ARMY using HF Radio. We learned a lesson here in South Carolina in 1989 with Hurricane Hugo and now have a fully equipped ham radio trailer (funded by Homeland Security). The custom built vehicle built by Nomad Technologies has allowed ham radio to be intergrated with State Emergency Management and FEMA. 73s de K4NJN Bob Besley Posted September 19, 2008 9:39 AM
• I'm glad to hear Col. Laverm Young endorse the use of HF radio in emergency communications. I'm a licensed amateur radio operator and volunteer as a RACES operator for the Berkeley CA Fire Department. HF has some advantages when your dealing with damaged telecom infrastructure. You can make direct voice contacts thousands of miles away with little more than a radio, antenna and power supply. It can also fill the gap for local communications when VHF or UHF repeaters are damaged or busy. The trickiest part is the antenna system. Volunteer amateur radio operators might not be able to deploy with a decent antenna system. The best way government agencies can help, is to simply stage HF antenna systems and power at EOC sites and in emergency communications vehicles. That would allow a volunteer with their radio, to simply sit down, plug in and start passing traffic. Best regards, Robert "Bruce" Carleton (WH6OI) Robert Posted September 3, 2008 11:24 PM
• Good to hear that someone finally recoginzes the need to include Ham Radio Frequencies and Volunteer Operators. Millions have been spent and wasted for commercial systems, that fail! When Disaster Strikes, Amatuer Radio will get message Thru!! Great Beginning, let's get ARMY/Navy/Air Force MARS involved too! We'll step up to the plate, even though we are volunteers and don't get paid! :-) A way to get Suplus Gear for this mission would be appreciated however! Lead On, I'm available to help is called on! Tom Kelly Posted September 3, 2008 12:33 PM