What is an EAM?

This question was recently posted to the UDXF newsgroup:

"I'm new on the list -- do I understand correctly that "EAM" refers to Emergency Action Message? If so, I wonder if all these are related to the weather in the northeast USA."

What is an EAM is a common question that milcom monitors get all the time. EAMs (Emergency Action Messages) have nothing to do with the weather. They are specialized messages transmitted for command and control to various U.S. military units. A basic understanding of what an EAM is can be found at http://monitoringtimes.com/html/eam.html. This was written by the dean of USSTRATCOM monitors Jeff Haverlah.

I added additional and new material to Jeff's piece in this month's Monitoring Times magazine in my monthly Milcom column. In my column titled November-Foxtrot-India-India-Four-Sierra: DoD EAMs revisited, I think the best information comes from the top dogs in DoD, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

In a JCS instruction 5721.01D dated February 8, 2008 on Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) Hybrid Solution (HS), they wrote: "EAMs are highly structured, authenticated messages primarily used in the C2 (Command and Control) of nuclear forces. EAMs are disseminated over numerous survivable and non‑survivable communication systems, including terrestrial and space systems."

In another online publication published in 2008, the Nuclear Matters: A Practical Guide, Chapter 5 had these two statements: “Emergency Action Message – Use Authorization Control. An Emergency Action Message (EAM) is the medium through which actions involving nuclear weapons are authorized. These messages are encrypted and sent to lower‑echelon units for action. The messages have different formats and may require authentication with sealed authentication code cards depending on the intent of the message. “National Military Command and Control System. The Joint Staff Director for Operations (J‑3) operates the C2 system. EAMs are conveyed to the Combatant Commands through secure communications links.”

There is a lot more to this story so if you are a Monitoring Times print or MTXpress subscriber, you can get the rest of the story including frequency and other comm networks (terrestrial , HF and satellite) info on pages 52/53 of your December 2009 Monitoring Times.

And the article mentioned above is not the end of this story. I have more that I plan on publishing in a future Milcom column in MT. You can get more information on MT and MTXpress at http://www.monitoringtimes.com/ or http://www.grove-ent.com/.

Interesting EAM ttraffic monitored on west coast last night

One of the top milcom monitors on the west coast, Matt Cawby in Washington, picked up some interesting Emergency Action Message (EAM) traffic late last night PDT and posted it to the Milcom list.

On 6739.0 kHz at 0530z, Andrews broadcast a 20-character EAM for Region Alpha, then followed with two 6-character EAMs, and a 20-character EAM for Region Bravo and Region Charlie.

A close friend of this blog Jeff Haverlah out in Houston earlier in the evening reported:

"15016.0 kHz was active at 0130z with EXTENSION (weak/fair levels here) broadcasting a 28-character EAM (Preamble-67L6BR) and simulcasting same on at least 11175.0 kHz (good levels) with nothing heard on 8992.0 or 4724.0 kHz."

Back on 29 Sep 2009 at 0521z a 6-character EAM was broadcast for Region Alpha.

Now do any of my readers here have some background on these regions that these EAMs are aimed for? If you know, and want to remain anonymous, drop me an email at n5fpw at brmemc dot net.

Also if you have monitored an EAM I would like to know about it. The minimum reporting requirements I am looking for are the start time (UTC), frequency / frequencies, the six character preamble, how many characters total (including premable) were broadcast and which station or unit transmitted the EAM.

Any help from our worldwide readers is sincerely appreciated and will be summarized here on this blog. Same email address as above will work for these reports as well.