Incident Communications Center Manager (ICCM)

[Combat_Comm]

Just curious, since we are moving to FEMA COML standards to be compliant with NIMS, will CAP finally recognize the Incident Communications Center Manager spot? If a comm unit is done right, that position is a life safer for the CUL.

-Rich Long

[etodd]

Having zero knowledge of this, I'm just curious as to how big of an incident or event would it take, for the command system to scale up to need this position?

[Combat_Comm]

with ICCM think radio room manager. Sadly CAP seems to see the CUL as this function and its not correct ICS. The CUL should be interfacing with the PSC and OSC to build/extend the communications infrastructure to support the mission plan. The CUL is also requesting resources and issuing radios.. this doesn't leave much time for supervising the MRO's and answering their questions, scheduling breaks, etc. That's where the ICCM comes in.

I have implemented this locally by choosing a competent MRO and knighting him a supervisor but this requires a bit of extra training. I'm blessed in my squadron to have more than one.

Here is the Job aid for the wildfire folks https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/job-aids/j-257-incident-communications-center-manager

[Eclipse]

Not needed.  CUL is fine.  Most missions have 2 radios and a couple antennas.

Whether something interfaces externally to CAP is irrelevant, since CAP people are
not going to staff a mission without CAP being onsite or involved, so CUL is fine.

In the rare case a CAP person sits in an EOC, etc., they can wear a different vest.

CAP does not provide resources to staff oter people's ICS they "bring their own".  You can argue it's a detriment,
but that's not changing anytime soon, so all these arguments about type ratings, matching ICS
are a waste of time (or closed in 5 minutes when it becomes important.)

[Combat_Comm]

Sadly that's not the case. I've had three exercises this year that had multi site comms with in CAP. Each site had 2 vhf and one HF to interlink the sites. There is only one CUL in an ICS structure and I was busy adding more sites and coordinating with the CAP mission staff like the federal CUL curriculum we have adopted teaches now.. the CUL was never intended to be a radio room manager.

[Eclipse]

You can have as many assistant CULs as you want, and the TITLE is irreverent irrelevant to the duty.

"Frank, I need you to go out to Forestville and CUL for that site..."

"ICS only allows one CUL, and that's you."

"Why are you still standing here?"

[Combat_Comm]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

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[CAP9907]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

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Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

[Spam]

So going from ICS precedent, how does this differ from designating a CAP member as a staging area manager? When an incident grows in scope to the point where we need people to manage different staging areas, that job isn't locked to a GBD, a GTL, or any other specific CAP qual, but rather the assignment is based on the KSAs for the task set.

When you say, "recognize", what are you asking for CAP to do in this regard?

R/s,
Spam

[Holding Pattern]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

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This was also the opinion of the instructors at the DHS ECD class I just took last week regarding the ITSL position being created in ICS.

And the position of local agencies.

And the position of FEMA.

ICS 300: Lesson 2, Bullet point 2:

"List the ICS positions which may include Deputies, and describe Deputy roles and
responsibilities. Describe differences between Deputies and Assistants."

[Holding Pattern]

If you want to get especially nitty gritty, you can refer to them as "technical specialists"

[Holding Pattern]

See also this Firescope review document:

http://www.firescope.org/firescope-history/ICS_position_title_review.pdf

Page 5:

Assistants
The next support position is the "Assistant" position. The use of Assistants has grown over the years. They are primarily found supporting the "Officer" positions. The difference between a Deputy and Assistant is that an Assistant need not be fully qualified for the Officer position they are supporting. Instead, the Assistant needs to be capable of completing the tasks assigned to them within the Command Staff function. For example, an "Assistant Safety Officer – Hazardous Materials" is typical in a Hazardous Materials response organization. This individual may not be fully qualified to be an incident Safety Officer, but has expertise to evaluate the safe conduct of Hazardous Materials entry operations. Assistants are commonly found supporting the following positions:

Safety Officer

Liaison Officer

Public Information Officer

Certain Unit Leader positions in the Logistics Section

[Holding Pattern]

This, by the way, is what makes MSAs in trainee status for other jobs so valuable.

[lordmonar]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

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Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

[CAP9907]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk

Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

And where do we get the money for this sophisticated networked infrastructure? I can't get a hotspot for my ICP let alone anyone to pay for lunch for the team...

[lordmonar]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk

Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

And where do we get the money for this sophisticated networked infrastructure? I can't get a hotspot for my ICP let alone anyone to pay for lunch for the team...

Sell a plane. 

[OldGuy]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

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Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

And where do we get the money for this sophisticated networked infrastructure? I can't get a hotspot for my ICP let alone anyone to pay for lunch for the team...

There is a story about the legendary soldier with a problem for every solution.

You might ask for ideas from Captalk. You might find that many carriers offer non profit hotspots at way low prices. See https://www.techsoup.org/products/--G-49861-- for an example.

[OldGuy]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk

Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

And where do we get the money for this sophisticated networked infrastructure? I can't get a hotspot for my ICP let alone anyone to pay for lunch for the team...

There is a story about the legendary soldier with a problem for every solution.

You might ask for ideas from Captalk. You might find that many carriers offer non profit hotspots at way low prices. See https://www.techsoup.org/products/--G-49861-- for an example.

Or sell a plane.

[CAP9907]

No worries. That's your opinion. Thanks for it. Anyone else care to chime in?

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk

Well, no. I'm pretty much gonna go with Eclipse on this one.

~9907

The problem with Eclipse's opinion is that it is llimited in scope.   Sure....CAP if fine with just usually having two radios in a back room.....but that's one of the reasons why we are so limited.    Comm is a lot more then just a couple of ground to air radios.  It should also be the computer network infrastructure, wifi network, phones, video dissemination, briefing presentations etc et al.     Sure.....99 our of 100 CAP missions are going to just be a 1-2 day operations with 1-2 planes in the air and maybe a ground team.   But do if you don't plan and train for the once a decade FOSSETT MISSION or KATRINA MISSION...then we will never be able to support those sort of missions.    I agree that there is a balance between training for the big war or training for the war that we know we fight.  But there is something to be said for expanding our mission base communications capabilities.

On the a side note.

1st Combat Communications Squadron 1997-2001!  FILO!

And where do we get the money for this sophisticated networked infrastructure? I can't get a hotspot for my ICP let alone anyone to pay for lunch for the team...

There is a story about the legendary soldier with a problem for every solution.

You might ask for ideas from Captalk. You might find that many carriers offer non profit hotspots at way low prices. See https://www.techsoup.org/products/--G-49861-- for an example.

again, wayyy low prices don't work if you have zero dollars.. let alone a networked Comms/data fusion system...

[lordmonar]

Well....then that's it.

But.......maybe if someone were to push the idea of a mobile communications suit (phones, computers, vtc, data back up, internet source)....and they come up with a price tag for 2-3/wing.....I bet the money could be found.

But.....if we are happy with the status quo....mission base housed in the same location with just a couple of old desk tops and the base station....we will never get it.....and we will never expand/improve our missions.

[Fubar]

But.......maybe if someone were to push the idea of a mobile communications suit (phones, computers, vtc, data back up, internet source)....and they come up with a price tag for 2-3/wing.....I bet the money could be found.

Just ask the Red Cross. They've spent millions on equipment to bring infrastructure to areas that don't have it so they can fulfill their mission. Satellite ground stations, portable satellite kits with computers and VOIP phones, radio equipment, heck they can even burn you a gift card while you munch on a meal and get directions to the shelter.

But then, the Red Cross has specific, defined missions and they know what they need. It doesn't hurt the American public is more than happy to open their wallets for them as well.

[Holding Pattern]

again, wayyy low prices don't work if you have zero dollars.. let alone a networked Comms/data fusion system...

I found your problem.

Recruit a fundraiser person.

If you can't find a way to fund $10/mo, your squadron is in dire straits.

[Combat_Comm]

Well here's the thing, we keep the CUL out of the planning loop because we have become convinced that we don't have a comm capability. We at the very least have vans with radios. There is free software to plot out where your radio coverage gets shaky. If the CUL is included in the planning and knows where the search area is going, not stuck babysitting inexperienced MROs, then he can work to determine:

Where do I need a relay set up to provide the best coverage to support the plan? What equipment, power source, people to I need? Who do we need to talk to? Is there another agency in that area we need to liasion with?

BTW this is what they teach when you become a FEMA Coml. The CUL is not the radio room guy. FEMA and the National Wildfire Working Group makes that clear. Our OSC and PSC are NOT comms people. They have NO training in communication planning.

For an ELT search, ICCM is completely unnecessary but for larger multi agency responses they can be valuable to free up the CUL to do what he needs to do.

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[Combat_Comm]

On the equipment side, our wing has 2 communication trailers. Both are 4 radio position. 3 VHF, 1 HF, a CUL. We will be adding HF digital soon. In addition we have a VHF and VHF/HF fly away kits to go forward and set up relay stations to provide support for ground ops. We use HF to reach back from remote locations to the ICP, Wing, and region HQ. We have been very successful.

This was my job for 10 years on active duty, 4 presidental declared disasters and more incidents than I can count. 

FILO '97 to '01 ATCALS radio shop!



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