Collins Aerospace has just announced that FEMA plans to deploy the Collins’ UrgentLink disaster communications system in six regional mobile emergency response support locations. They claim that UrgentLink HF communications system is the first nationwide public safety network of its kind.
The press release announcing this contract notes:
The Urgent Link solution, a subscription-based service fully managed and maintained by Collins Aerospace, calls for the deployment of radios in FEMA’s six regional Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) locations and 100 cached radios for use during disasters. Operating on an HF spectrum specifically authorized by the FCC for disaster use, UrgentLink uses ground stations throughout the U.S. to create redundant coverage when landlines and cellular, satellite and microwave networks and other systems have been disabled or destroyed by hurricanes, wildfires, terrorist acts, or other catastrophic events.
“Imagine being in a situation where there are no phones, no cell service and even emergency responder radios are rendered useless — it can be incredibly scary and dangerous for emergency personnel and the public,” said LeAnn Ridgeway, vice president and general manager, Information Management Services for Collins Aerospace. “That’s the situation we created UrgentLink to address and we’re proud to provide FEMA with this mission-critical backup system.”
The UrgentLink network will be available to FEMA as soon as the radios are deployed, which is expected to be by June 2020 in preparation for the 2020 hurricane season. FEMA will join other UrgentLink customers, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – the second largest public safety agency in the country.
A 2018 UrgentLink brochure reads:
Ham radio operators provide a very important service during and after a disaster. Using High Frequency (HF) radios they can communicate long distances without reliance on local infrastructure that may have been damaged or destroyed. Many of the operators are trained in disaster response and generously volunteer their time and equipment to help out.
There is a weakness – availability. Ham radios require a skilled and experienced operator. The greatest need for them is typically during the first 24-48 hours after a disaster and it’s during this time that it’s most challenging for people to get around. If the ham radio operator is not on site when the disaster strikes you will not have access to their services.
In the case of Hurricane Maria, it took three days for the ham radio operator, supporting the Red Cross, to get to their headquarters. And a week after, hurricane officials were calling to ask for even more ham’s to be sent in from the US mainland. This challenge was faced despite this event being predicted ahead of time. What would the delay be with a disaster such as an earthquake that cannot be predicted days ahead of time?
Anyone else find it kind of ironic that this is coming from Collins?
Alex says
Yeah, well, Collins got spanked by Yaesu, Kenwood, and finally Icom. They refused to keep up with Ham technology.
They are just bitter.
Goody K3NG says
It doesn’t surprise me. The Collins company was through at least one acquisition (by Rockwell) and perhaps others (I’m too lazy to Google it at the moment) and its amateur radio past is likely a footnote in their history now. It’s a totally different company with just the name, much like whatever is Heathkit today.
Undoubtedly amateur radio could build a system to do what UrgentLink does. We have operators who have been using ALE for years and we have a host of other digital protocols that could be used as well. If we only had a fully open, decentralized SMTP-like messaging system with full Internet interoperability that could operate on top of the on air digital protocol layer. No, that’s not Winlink.
Fred says
So who is surprised ?
Between the ARRL selling advertising in QST along with the 4 major radio manufacturers, selling radios, the first step was NO-CODE. Next will be NO-Test. Welcome to CB radio. The big money in Amateur radio has spoken.
Stan says
That’s fine for FEMA. Remember, though, that it takes several days for them to respond to disasters, too, so I wonder if the system will be of any more use than Hams as far as responsiveness is concerned. Also, FEMA has lots of money. Will counties and towns with smaller budgets want to pay the ongoing Collins subscription fee? As Hams, maybe we should concentrate on helping our communities before FEMA arrives.
Jorda Bugge, KC0upl says
I saw this coming back in 2014 where I got used to live. We did net control ops often before the county was up and running an EOC with all on board. Just retrieving one member/EC while taking reports for one controller was daunting. ARES switched to operating on a Public Safety channel.
Dave Lankinen says
The Collins Company has become bastardized by profit making CEOs and Wallstreet Greedy Jnvestment Groups who try to extract the last pennies from human suffering, when the amateur community provided a service for free for almost a century.
Its no wonder, this is the direction this country has been heading for the last 40 years. Profits trump human life. (No Pun Intended). I.e . China and COVID-19 It called the law of unintended consequences.
Joe Wonoski says
Salesmanship is the one word to describe this. They want to sell radios. What do these installations cost? Does each agency have the money?
Joe W1AIU says
And FEMA will jump in, because who knows emergency communications better than government suits?! (Sarcasm intended) As for HF emcomm traffic, the idea of interoperability with the Internet is fine as long as there’s a failsafe fallback to RF circuits only. Unlike ARES that, should the Internet fail during an emergency, DMR isn’t any better than your local FM analog repeater.
Simcha says
Glad they are doing this . I would not want to rely on a bunch of old angry men to be there for me.
WA2ULI says
So the government spends decades making it hard for Hams, says they don’t need them and stops supporting EMCOMM training sessions then complains that they aren’t available??
Hmmm, I wonder why?
John says
I have been a ham for 53 years. There was a time when amature radio was on par with police, fire, and other emergency services. Those days are very long gone, and the need for amateure assistance in emergencies is no more. The latest systems being employed by FEMA, and most state EC’s make amateur radio look like tin cans and string.
Bobby says
The ones supporting ham radio got greedy and old. Thus slow response. Elmers did not enough emlering and young kids are now in 30s from that “great” err. Their is so much more things to learn that the human cant retain so much, that much so ham radio provides no money to live from, unless you skate the ethics lines. So it was designed to fail from start. Now ones that are in 30s and have power to change things are unaware of what they do in the same understanding the old people that know the value in this system. The age gap from all the manly men of ww2, grows due to egos of both age groups and the challenges to changing of the guard smoothly.
John Jackson says
In the kinds of disaster scenarios being imagined here, the cans and string may work better than anything else.
Having worked in the mission critical public safety communications sector for over 30 years now, it’s clear to see that the systems we have developed and deployed are sometimes very dependent on other technologies that may or may not work in a true disaster.
Ham radio may be the one of the only viable options left in such a scenario.
I wouldn’t give up on it just yet. I’m not.
Tom Talley W5XTT says
Art Collins would disagree with you, and so do I.
Glen Hanneman says
In rural areas big government still won’t be there. My rural end of the county is continually ignored by all government agencies. We have the highest percentage of hams in the county for that reason. Plus now days who can afford the equipment to be like big brother? Last big fire the SO couldn’t get the message out to a lot of parts but more folks heard about the threat because of hams.
WX0NET says
You are correct…to me, it’s just another system to fail. What is the reasons for taking emcomm and putting it solely in the hands of government?
Cal Zethmayr says
Pogo said “We have met the enemy and it is us”. Recently while the last tropical storm was still out in the Gulf of Mexico our County EC put out calls for volunteer to work at our well equipped EOC and shelters. Out of the more than 800 licensed Amateurs in his county NONE responded. When I was a novice in 1954 I was among the dozens of hams that showed up at the local Police Dept to check into the weekly net on a Gonset 2 meter rig. Over 60+ years I’ve seen the reality that we are not a dependable source of people power. Maybe all of the government paperwork is one factor.
Goody K3NG says
John, I agree 110%. I almost posted a diatribe to this effect, but I’ve grown tired of the debates online about emcomm. Amateur radio emcomm provided value back when the primary means of communication for the general public was landline telephone, and two way radio resources for public agencies was a much more limited and less capable resource. I fear our emcomm efforts today are merely exercises in PR.
Drew says
I was part of a group, now disbanded, who would deploy with our state forces and provide HF reach back for them in the event satcom was inoperable. We trained weekly and exclusively on passing traffic in different ways but mostly HF Winlink over Pactor. We had tiny scanners, printers, and obviously laptops in our kits (purchased by the state) and had custody over that gear so it was “naturally” spread across the state and ready to go. That mission to me seemed about the last decent reason for Amateurs in emcomm. Also, though made up of amateurs we didn’t operate on amateur freqs, we were given access to government frequencies where encryption could be used. We were all amateurs but were using a difference license to operate for this mission. Most of the “rubber duck commandos” I see will only be in the way when showing up (probably uninvited) to disaster scenes. I do think ARES can provide a service during weather events to NWS though.
Rick says
We like to talk about our emcomm capability. Ok, lets say New Madrid just now unleashed a M8 event, and parts of several Midwestern states are devastated – power grid down, transportation network unusable, mass casualties everywhere. All this with no warning. How many hams are ready (I.e., a complete station ready to deploy, radio, antenna, computer, and power; and personal sustainment supplies) AND willing to leave home to operate 12 hour days for the next one or two weeks as part of an emcomm response? We need two hams per each radio in order to operate 24/7. In addition, during the Maria response, all they wanted was experienced digital operators. Personally, I don’t see that happening. “Honey, don’t worry about the flattened house, no utilities, etc. I’ll be back when I can.”. Yeah, right… My point is, real disaster response is not like chasing storms, its a very committed decision. FEMA is not doing their job if they don’t prep for this stuff, that’s their mission. IMO they need need a lot more than 6 mobile units and 100 cached radios – probably that many per FEMA Region. And I bet their stuff is EMP protected in storage. I think local hams are best suited to add value in local neighborhoods, helping neighbors with essential comms. We are in no position to assume responsibility across the board for comms for first responders.
Mike Cullen says
Good news for hams. Our city’s fire chief tells us that he stays awake at night knowing that if the grid/Internet/cell services go down, the majority of the public will have no ability to muster 911 services. He’s asked local hams to don their McGyver problem-solving hats and think “auxilliary communications.” We’ve been playing with the use of FRS/GMRS at the neighborhood level, acting as FRS-to-2M relays into a 2M radio at fire HQ. The scheme uses the “Neighborhood HamWatch” architecture from Radio-Relay.org . We’ve also noted that our towns/cities have limited ability to push megabytes of data efficiently during “grid down” situations. We’ve been working with regional AREDN.org mesh links for five years and are gaining traction with the use of Voice-over-IP and IP camera services. While FEMA/Collins are stepping in on the HF side, there’s plenty for hams to be doing on the local level to connect neighbors, neighborhood groups, towns, and their state’s EOC. Our younger, newly licensed hams see this urgent need and are eager to be mentored.
Thomas Childress says
About 15 years ago our local Disaster Emergency Coordinator told our small local ham group that he(who was also the Sheriff) wouldnt need our services even to storm spot. They would use cell phones now! Worked terrible. Our group also kept up the repeater site maintaining both County repeater and ham repeater and we hams all had County CD numbers so we could use our 2 meter repeater for coordination and use the County frequency for emergencies…suchas a tornado on the ground. Cell phones were the new thing. So for 15 years we sit helpless while their is no real storm coverage.
Robert says
Wow, reading their (Collins) written statement sucks…. If there was/is a 24-48 hour delay in obtaining Amateur Radio Operators, it’s not the Radio Operators, but most likely the supporting Organizations that delay their deployments. Most Radio Operators are available quick-time when incidents happen. Many have go-bags and ready to move out to any location/State! Sounds like a mean Marketing Ploy for their new UrgentLink HF Network$! Instead of including (or not even mentioning) Amateur Radio (which Operators are qualified, well practiced, and have more communications network management and message handling experience than most other folks that think they get a new network and just start cold!), they could have written that their new network would be a vital enhancement to the “overall” communications needs of a disaster. We gotta fight for the airwaves and the vital services we provide, else these commercial networks will soon vie for our frequencies too, stating their networks are more important! W6FGH
Rob W4ZNG says
Next coming online: SpaceX’s starlink: https://medium.com/swlh/how-elon-musks-starlink-could-disrupt-the-telecommunications-industry-838b44c1d900
One more layer of comms, one more layer of reliability. However, this one kinda makes Collins’ latest look like crystal sets and spark-gap transmitters.
Which gets us back to where hams fit in. In the increasingly rare event that all of the nicely packaged commercial solutions down at the EOC somehow go awry and there’s no tech support available, hams with minimal gear (and a lot of experience) can re-establish at least some level of communication. It won’t be plush broadband, and it surely won’t be pretty, but “some” is infinitely better than “exactly zero.” Admittedly though, the odds of this happening are increasingly slim every year. For which I am thankful.
In the meantime however, we get to have fun with our gear. It’s a great excuse to go camping, and mess around with solar power, generators, and other cool gear. That’s enough for me.
Ham Realist says
In many countries ham radio has become so irrelevant to young people that if there are ham radio ops on the air during a disaster it will be because they are 80 and need someone to come and rescue them, not because they are fit and able to offer help themselves
Steve says
“there’s plenty for hams to be doing on the local level to connect neighbors, neighborhood groups, towns, and their state’s EOC. Our younger, newly licensed hams see this urgent need and are eager to be mentored.”
I’d like to know more about this as younger newly licenced ham.
So there are some new subscription services like this and eventually starlink. Who gets that access to this new stuff?
Exactly nothing should stop ham from helping anyone outside of whoever might have this new tech. And that sounds like a lot of people who will not have access.
Where is the arrl on even half of what you say?
As someone new, I don’t understand. Seems like opportunity to reach a huge potential of good will and remind everyone how important community communications can be.
Instead all I see is defeatist talk and lamenting they might take away spectrum.
So this looks like opportunity to step up instead of cowering in the shack with piles of gear.
J. B. says
This is what happens when you dumb everything down and let everyone in. At the most basic level, you must first do your FEMA Training – Mimms I think they call it.. All I learned from doing the level 100, 700, 800 was that the government people were in charge, and all you were there for was to loan them your radio and frequencies. You cannot self deploy and you cannot take charge of any situation. And if you read the bio of one of the people that was sent to Puerto Rico a couple of years ago when they had total devastation.. The ARRL sent them down there blind, they had no instruction, they had no training, they were not expected to be there and the people in charge left them to their own devices. The only good thing they had to say was that one of their members of their team was a fireman so they deployed to a firehouse and the fire company took care of them. You have to be 100% self sufficient, you cannot be a burden on those you are trying to help. You have to expect that nothing is going to be there, not even a table to operate from or a bed to sleep on or food to eat. Even water, you must bring your own food and water – at least 3 days worth. Too many people confuses Emcoms with a vacation – like the government is going to sponsor you. Only where I live the most dangerous thing is probably cold weather for the elderly – when the power goes out, snow / ice storm – that takes out the electricity, and flooding. And as this article said – with flooding, if you are not deployed before it floods, forget about getting there after it happens! At the very minimum – you need to have very good equipment – not a 706 mk II G and a G5RV. You need to have at least a General Class License and equipment good enough to talk back to the state EOC. With hardened cell phone service, the government agencies will tell you that as long as their cell phone works – we don’t need you! Since they don’t need you, they won’t train you.. A untrained group is called a MOB.
Nothing worse than a mob showing up trying to volunteer for a job where you are not wanted.
All of the big 3 – Red Cross, Salvation Army, FEMA are subscribed to the Starnet in Pennsylvania.
As a ham, I know that unless the world comes to an end, we will never be called, so why bother?
Most of the people that volunteers for this sort of thing are wackers.. And, just the same as how they cheated their way into amateur radio – by studying the questions and answers / not reading the book and learning on their own, they refuse to take any sort of classes or get any sort of training..
Firemen in PA that goes to Fire School has at the bare minimum about 1000 hours of training before they become certified, although there is no mandated certification process. A person could volunteer to be a fireman one day and be out at a fire the next with no training, but they aren’t much good to you or anyone else until they are trained..
J. B. says
Corona Virus shut down the USA for 3 months, how many nets, how many hams went out of their way to try to help – even the homeless get shelter? NONE! I did not hear not 1 conversation on amateur radio where a group organized and deployed and helped not one single person.. All people were worried about was themselves.. Where can I buy up all the food and toilet paper? Why was it that you couldn’t buy toilet paper or food, but there was no shortage of MILK? The people wanted bread and pre made food because they were too dumb to cook their own food and too stupid to drive down the street to the local supermarket – because they were so accustomed to going to Walmart that when Walmart ran out of food they panic’d.
Mike K1NPT says
Steve — Welcome to the hobby. Yes, there’s always been a segment within the ham community that expects to receive engraved invitations from local authorities when “bad stuff” happens. After all, many of the town/city emergency operations plans (BTW, worth reading this public document) mention organized entities like CERT, ARES, RACES, REACT, etc.
The emergency management agency directors that I know value volunteers who’ve endured the ICS/NIMS classes and can function as reliable, quick-study, collegial, problem-solving generalists. During the first eight weeks of COVID, our radio club members manned the “situation” unit, crafted daily PowerPoints for town leaders, drafted citizen surveys, collected PPE, surveyed food distribution sites, solved an array of info tech issues, deployed new banks of phones, surveyed public WiFi spots …. You couldn’t just be a volunteer carrying a go-bag full of radios.
Now, as we head further into the Atlantic hurricane season, we have to find and plan for several more emergency shelters in order to meet social-distancing rules. We also have to worry about how to stay in contact with neighborhoods when the normal comms are down. High-speed data transfer — in the absence of cell service — remains one of those uncomfortable to ponder scenarios.
I’d encourage new hams to learn as much as possible from their local radio club, ARES/RACES group, local CERT, Red Cross, and emergency management agency. Learn about the people, their particular processes, and their dependencies on particular technologies. When their technology breaks, we often have a radio-based way to fill the void. While the new Collins national HF system may help government users, radio-hobbyists are very much needed to help local government communicate with its residents.
BenP says
This HF solution is dead in the water. Starlink is going to totally upend the idea of EMCOMM. A station costs 500$, is 100$ a month, portable by a single person, and can pull near Gb data speeds with latency of under 30ms. With a single one of these stations you can have full high speed internet access anywhere in minutes after a disaster. You could go further by setting up a portable cell tower or even just mesh wifi on a pole and cover an entire town or subdivision with cell and internet service, again in hours.
Seattle fire and rescue groups have already deployed it during the wild fires in 2020 and have said its absolutely game changing.
Sorry but starlink will render ham EMCOMM into a silly prepper EOTWAWKI exercise. If “the internet” is “down” then everything is so messed up we are facing mass starvation anyway. Since “the internet” is massively distributed it really doesn’t just “go down” all at once, only regionally. And a global satellite network isnt regional.
Joe says
Agreed!
Wx0NET says
Every manmade system has the potential for catastrophic failure…
Joe says
Hmmm. I’m not quite sure how satellite ops would be compromised by natural disasters. Terrorism, yes, but that’s far fetched. The regional HF Collins ops could be targeted in the same fashion as any other terrorist target. FEMA will always have access to satellite ops, both commercial and military, if necessary. Connecting that to a compromised POTS is another issue.
Joe says
I forgot to address the brochure propaganda about the “availability” of skilled amateur radio operators. Immediate response can be – and will be – handled by FEMA specialists and assets. It’s the longer term mitigation that amateur radio volunteers can provide, e.g. on-going health and welfare, situational awareness, coordination of NGOs, infrastructure repair reporting/directing, and the list is quite long. NOTE: If Collins’ marketing department believes that the volunteer amateur radio operator and his(her) equipment is the biggest push back to expect from FEMA procurement, then that tells you a lot about how valuable amateur radio assets must really be! Joe, N2QOJ – AZ DEM Maricopa County AUXCOMM and former Deputy OEM Coordinator.
Rob W4ZNG says
>>>Hmmm. I’m not quite sure how satellite ops would be compromised by natural disasters.
By a Kessler event is one way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
This seems unlikely at the moment but OTOH, so did 9-11, Katrina, et al before they happened. And in the meantime we’re all having good, cheap fun playing radio, so there’s that.
On a related note, the 2013 movie “Gravity” was about a Kessler event and they even managed to work in some ham radio toward the end. It’s a pretty good watch.