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Winlink
assists in US National Security Operations
“Everyone involved with Winlink 2000 has been very responsive, and that means a great deal.”
QUOTE: Since the
Pentagon attack the (censored) Office has been using 1200 and 9600 baud packets.
We compared this with PACTOR as supported by Winlink. A lot has been learned by
"trial and terror" and from the Amateur radio community.
There have been a lot of helpful hands out there. The PACTOR testing
took place during an ECOM exercise for (censored) on March 6th.
The Office has four Districts. Each one had a separate simulated incident
to deal with in a two-hour period. Our
role was to provide “Situation Reports” that reflect what could take place
as a result of a chemical, biological and/or radiological incidents. Sometime,
secondary incidents are incorporated in the exercise, e.g., a chemical release,
a conventional explosion or an airplane crash. Situation Report information was
processed as if from the command post of the simulated incident.
The IC or someone of the Unified Command would field questions that
required a response from the Office. What
could in practice be expected to take place in several days was compressed into
two hours of heavy traffic transmitted, initially, via packet radio. During the last test
we were operating on PACTOR. As we were operating under normal conditions we
were limited to 30 minutes connect time per PMBO. However, that was not a real
problem as there are several PMBOs in this area that we could connect to and on
different bands. We conducted the entire portion of this exercise on PACTOR
I. HF band conditions were changing and it required us moving from 7 MHz
to 10 and then to 14 MHz. Nevertheless,
this segment of the exercise did fine, and within a reasonable amount of time,
the messages were returning from the (censured) office. However, one of the most
important lessons learned was that we definitely have to move to PACTOR II or
III -- preferably III. We are
working on this now the Winlink Development Team. UNQUOTE Australia needs to learn from this US
initiative. Under the present circumstances it would not be unreasonable to hope
that the Australian Communications Authority immediately approve and not wait
until 2005 before it announces whether or not it will allow Winlink in
Australia. Time has run out. |
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