NIFC COMMUNICATIONS

General Discussion
#35

VFIRE is supposed to be an interop group. To be used between more than one agency. Also it is in the LG part of the spectrum. Which is very limited already Not really appropriate for the Feds to use on their own small fires when they have gobs more spectrum available on the Fed side than LG/State will ever have.

VTAC is even worse to use, it is to be used for comms between different types of agencies such as law/fire.

I know it does not always get done like this, sometimes VFIRE are used on LG IA Tac, but nobody should try and make it worse. The V channels are very limited already.

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#36

Where did the ICS system start ? Was it a creation of the Feds ?
I seem to remember back in my foggy memory that it started in Southern California with local coordination between the state and Forest Service leaders. It grew and improved with use until 9/11 when FS personnel used it to assist the FDNY and the NYPD in their coordinating of activities in the rescue, search and then recovery from the towers. Then all of a sudden it became this great FEDERAL Program (Washington) they created to be changed and spread all over the country (ICS-100, ICS-200, ICS-300 and ICS-400 )
It is interesting how one of the most inter-mixed areas in the country ( population, multi-agency fire departments, fire prone areas with a fire season.) Can create an excellent system to be assumed by bureaucrats then dictate how all should be used back to those who created it. In this case, changing the comms operation in the slow time of the season instead of tweaking to obtain improvement.

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#37

FIRESCOPE

Following deadly wildfires in Southern California in 1970, the state of California along with Cal OES and various local fire departments formed FIRESCOPE . “It’s an acronym. It stands for FIrefighting RESources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies,”

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#38

1981-12-12-ICS-120-1.pdf (2.0 MB)

Attached is the very first FIRESCOPE ICS Operational Systems Description that was the initial text for I-220, Basic ICS. All of the thoughts that many have written above about interagency cooperation and, particularly, interoperability are contained in the attachment.

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#39

This federal edict is very concerning for many reasons surrounding not only the growth made with interagency cooperation since the inception of FIRESCOPE, with firefighter safety which is often the top issue or in the top three issues of nearly every after-action report, with operational efficiencies and with the workloads and costs of deleting NIFC programmed frequencies in agency radios. The latter stated workload and cost impacts of reprogramming radios will be huge.

Couple the latter reprogramming impacts with specific agency radios that require their technicians to touch or program? How about having to reprogram all the mobile radios which is typically not done today?

A workaround if the NIFC frequencies must be better controlled by NIFC was mentioned by a high-ranking chief at this week’s FIRESCOPE Board of Director’s meeting. He stated don’t remove the frequencies just seek NIFC approval for their usage at the time of need. Great idea but still just a work around.

Why not just leave this proposed change alone and inform the reputed Boise author of this idea to learn about interagency efficiencies?

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#40

So many things to say about this, and such nonspecific initial information in the first post. Not the OP’s fault of course.

Frequencies are resources to be ordered on a fire like any other resource.

Here is an analogy I just thought of: All fed fire engines are to be stored at a yard in Washington DC until needed. Then they will be shipped to the fire.

I think some pencil pusher thinks that specific frequencies are like encryption keys to be guarded, and that this edict will somehow enhance OPSEC from nefarious actors. Of course nefarious actors are not the main hazard 25 miles back forest road 32N64-1027 but confused comms could be.

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#41

@Birken_Vogt exactly what the larger threat? not having efficient means to get onto a common frequency or someone hopping on a frequency and causing issues. They dont operate on encrypted systems so any person could just turn on a scanner and figure out a tac channel, repeater output etc. This still just blows me away if the reason is because of some sort of opsec.

#42

Based on my limited (especially over the last decade) knowledge of the subject, I would make an educated guess that this idea originated with FCC, and not NIFC.

A year or so ago, a new chairperson of the Commission issued a (unilateral, I’m guessing), draconian set of new rules re: all radios, the frequencies they were allowed to access (and no other), and how they were to be programmed, period. This would have had sweeping, devastating effect on all Amateur Radio Operators, and their equipment, which meet none of these criteria. Finally somebody got his attention and pointed out, eh, sir, you can’t do that to hams. Different laws, different licensing schemes, etc. etc. So they were dropped, to some extent. But generally, the FCC is opposed to frequency - agile radios of any sort - if the law allows them to do it.

BTW as pointed out above, just in case there are some who don’t know, yes, SoCal moved to FIRESCOPE, then developed ICS. When FEMA was created, they took it over, and added NIMS. I was “born” under LFO, and left USFS under ICS/NIMS.

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#43

From the 2022 Interagency Standards for Fire and Aviation Operations (Red Book), Chapter 15: Communications:

4 Radio Frequency Management
5 Under Executive Order 13556 and in accordance with DOI/USDA policies and
6 guidelines, all documents which include DOI/USDA frequencies are considered
7 to be Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and must be controlled and
8 marked as such following the guidance of the National Archives CUI Marking
9 Handbook Version 1.1.
10 Therefore, any documents containing frequency information whose
11 dissemination is not controlled with a password, must be labeled at the top and
12 bottom of each page with CUI and controlled as such.
13 Frequency Modulated (FM) and Amplitude Modulated (AM) frequencies are
14 approved and assigned by a designated Washington Office frequency manager
15 and managed by state and local communications officers. Frequencies shall not
16 be transmitted without written permission from formally appointed frequency
17 management personnel at the local, state, regional, or national level.
18 Radio interference must be reported to NIFC CDO (or COMC when assigned)
19 when adversely impacting incident communications. Minimum reporting
20 information: location, radio frequency, time and date (including interference
21 duration), and sound or source for interference

3 CFR 13556 - Executive Order 13556 of November 4, 2010. Controlled Unclassified Information:

If I remember correctly, everything that used to be “For Official Use Only,” “Sensitive but Unclassified,” and similar designations got standardized in to “Controlled Unclassified Information.” I am not sure when or why NIFC frequencies were put in to that category.

#44

It seems, from that paragraph, that national hands freqs to regional who hands them to state who hands them to local. Which is pretty much how we do it right now.

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#45

The NIFC as well as all the frequencies in the federal spectrum, are not regulated through the FCC. They are regulated and licenses are granted by the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration.)
There are a very limited number of frequencies available, which is why, in a busy fire season NIFC has to go begging for repeater pairs from other federal agencies. Oh and by the way, NIFC can and has changed repeater pairs on as needed basis so, as an example, NIFC C-4 this year might not be NIFC C-4 next year.
The FCC regulates all part 90 civilian commercial and public safety frequencies, as referenced in the NIFOG (National Interoperable Field Operations Guide.) If you’re a comms geek, the NIFOG should be a mandatory reference.

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#46

I would not say there are a very limited number of fed freqs for use in the field, they have a lot of tac channels and repeat/command pairs in the book to start with.

But their practice of setting up a whole bunch of repeaters on a fire and giving each its own discrete pair means they have to have a whole lot of channels. Which is relatively easy when you have all that Fed space above 162 which is very sparsely used and under the same Fed umbrella (NTIA) as the organization (USFS/BLM/NIFC/whatever). Just ask and they can give them quickly.

Plus each forest has its own fire net/forest net redundant pair of repeater pairs plus maybe a service net, there is a lot of infrastructure and blank space already available. The feds have it good.

By contrast Cal Fire operates in the local/state space where pretty much every single radio channel is already taken by someone so they had to do a whole lot of gymnastics about 10 years ago to figure out freqs they could squeeze in between their own freqs to get all these new tac channels they have been able to assign in recent years.

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#47

One agency within the US administration decides and operates these radio issues?

Wondering will this affect all the aircraft radio use also, since many contractors have preprogrammed there aircraft.

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#48

I should have been clearer when I talked about the limited number of frequencies available to NIFC. I should have said repeater frequency pairs. My apologies.
If I read the NTIA manual correctly, section 4.3.7 allocates 280 channels for repeater pairs for a total of 140 repeater pairs to be used nationwide by USDA, USDI, FBI, Border Patrol, Fish & Wildlife and the military. The problem for NIFC is that the fire COML’s have to cover a lot of ground with a system that is designed to work with 5 watt handheld radios in, as you well know is difficult terrain. This usually means finding high spots for a lot of repeaters. Geographic coordination becomes a pain for the coordinators, especially in well populated locations when a repeater on a tall mountain can be heard for a hundred or more miles around the site.
Both federal and state agencies are in the same boat when it comes to frequency coordination. Personally I wouldn’t want to be in the coordination folks shoes for all the money in the world.

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#49

It’s not the frequencies themselves, but the equipment. FCC is hostile to any radio that can be programmed from the keyboard, and their rules state that radios type accepted for a particular service cannot be capable of accessing any other service. And FCC does issue type acceptance for every radio in a service.

FCC is involved in the allocation, not of specific frequencies (with exceptions), but with bands of frequencies. I can’t address how much of any frequency band they are free to allocate on their own, because international treaties get involved.

Nevertheless, I do not have specific knowledge re: what would have led NIFC to take this on.

#50

Here in Calif, many wildland IA ops are run using VFIRE and VTAC channels, as most fires involve more than one agency, or have immediate potential to become a multi-agency incident. In the FIRESCOPE MACS 441-1 (Radio Comm Guidelines), the VTAC channels usage notes indicate: “These channels are for inter-agency/inter-discipline use.” For small IA fires on a NF in Calif, I believe the forest net is supposed to be the main command channel, yes? And if the NF doesn’t have its own tac channel, one of the R5 tacs is used? It is interesting that Cal Fire has developed its own comprehensive regional system of command channel repeaters and tactical channels that can be used for IA and well-in (several op periods or more) to an incident operation, and that LG and Fed fire resources are fully able to and allowed to use the system when on the incident.

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#51

Each forest around here has 2 roughly parallel command channels on most of the same mountain tops. So for IA they can use their secondary command channel for fire traffic and leave their primary for routine traffic. Or even longer if they choose without having to get a set of command repeaters installed. I am not aware of any forest in these parts that has its own tac channel. Last time I checked the TNF ran NIFC Tac 2 for most IA. I could be a little wrong on the tac assignments. It would be easy for them to use Tac 3 or one of the R5 tacs if they had the authorization.

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#52

Exactly, and there’s the rub. With FCC’s insistence that radios Type Accepted for public service, cannot be programmed other than by a computer, or some similar, normally inaccessible means, then limiting frequencies / channels to those assigned to a specific agency unless specifically and specially allocated, makes me think that whatever the motivation, NIFC is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

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#53

If I remember right the NIFOG listed the nifc channels on the VHF Incident Response (IR) Federal Interoperability Channels. They are no longer referenced in the 2019 version. Some of the channels were used on that list but not all of them.

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#54

The 2022 NIFOG has the fed interop frequencies.

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