Saturday, July 7, 2007

Nuclear coded communication messages sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear forces.
International radio operators picked up large numbers of coded Air Force communications being sent around the world on June 26 that indicated some type of military activity was about to take place.

A U.S. military official said the radio traffic was monitored from the Air Force Global High Frequency System (GHFS) that some observers regarded as "extraordinary" because of the unprecedented length of messages. They were sent to Air Force commanders at Andrews Air Force Base; Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island; Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Lajes Field in the Azores; Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Salinas Air Base, Puerto Rico; Thule Air Base, Greenland; and Yokota Air Base, Japan. All are sites of GHFS ground stations.

The messages appeared to be emergency action messages, coded communications sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear forces.

The messages sent June 26 included 174 characters, much longer than normal 30-character messages, and amateur radio monitors say they have not seen the size of this message since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

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From: seanosborne-at-net

Last night there was extraordinary radio traffic on the GHFS (the Air Force Global HF System). The freqs used for this traffic and the "echo" repeats were: 4724, 8992, 11175 and 15016 kHz. The net for these freqs is fixed to the following Air Force Bases: Andrews, Ascension, Elmendorf, Anderson (Guam), Hickam, Lejes, Offutt, Salinas, Thule, Yokota plus a couple of formerly aliased stations (like Diego Garcia and Cyprus). The these freqs were humming with extremely large EAMs (Emergency Action Messages) which are issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to USAF strategic nuclear forces.

A normal EAM consists of phonetic alpha-numeric string which is the message preamble and is repeated 3 times. The preamble is followed by the message text, which normally can be up to 30 alpha-numerica characters. Last nights messages were 174 characters long. According to the amatuer radio network which has followed the GHFS broadcasts for decades, a message of this size has not been copied on the system since the Gulf War of 1991.

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