SATERN and the Patriot North 2021 Exercise: Planning IS Required!
Each summer, the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network (SATERN) has the opportunity to participate in the Patriot North Exercise in southwestern Wisconsin. The Patriot North Exercise is national in scope and is a Domestic Operations (DOMOPS) training exercise sponsored by the Defense Department’s National Guard Bureau (NGB). It provides a forum for inter-agency coordination between local, state, and federal governments, as well as civilian organizations, during a disaster situation. The week-long exercise is centered at two military facilities about 25 miles apart, Volk Field Air National Guard Base and Fort McCoy, a U.S. Army installation located on 60,000 acres.
SATERN has been a participant in the Patriot North Exercise since about 2013. Its focus is to provide uninterrupted communications for Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) and other organizations during deployments in the field when normal communication infrastructure is not available. The Patriot North Exercise provides an excellent venue to practice communications in an adverse environment. This year’s exercise was held in mid-June.
Planning for the Interface with the Military
The 2021 exercise had all the stars aligned for SATERN, but in the wrong way. The military has two week-long planning meetings which are utilized for networking with the other groups and determining who needs what resources along with where and when for the days of the exercise. Unfortunately, Salvation Army EDS and SATERN were not able to attend any of these important meetings. This occurred because the Salvation Army had recently changed the format of its email addresses and the invitations to these meetings were not received. It was only after the Final Planning Meeting (FPM) that the military called our Incident Commander to ask if we were participating. The answer was yes. During this call it was also learned that the exercise had been moved up a month to mid-June from its normal July timeframe. That set the stage to plan our participation for a major exercise in six weeks when normally this is about a sixmonth endeavor.
While six weeks may seem like a luxury in comparison to planning for a genuine emergency response, this deployment took place on a military base and required coordination by over a thousand people. The exercise is choreographed to the nth degree and the plan is essentially finalized at the FPM. The Salvation Army came into the picture after the FPM. Fortunately, the military is appreciative of what we do for the exercise and was gracious enough to integrate us into the exercise even at that late hour.
However, our late arrival). These two radios were completely separate setups such that the backup could immediately take over in case one failed for any reason.
