Major emergencies such as an earthquake require close coordination among multiple Federal, Civilian and commercial partners for effective response. During such natural disasters, in addition to the need for interoperability among these first responders and their command centers, the challenge is generally lack of macro network coverage in austere environments where these disasters strike. No network means no communication, collaboration, coordination or situational awareness (SA). As such, rapid deployment of a mission critical ad-hoc network through deployable assets in such zero-coverage environments becomes a paramount operational need and hence a challenge. To provide capacity connectivity augmentation and uniform RAN side coverage in disconnected zones, mobile and deployable assets with LEO satellite backhaul are required.

SA is then achieved through unmanned land and aerial systems as well as mission-critical comms systems and software that terminate in interconnected mobile command vehicles. To achieve the connectivity and SA goal, a reference architecture (RA) composed of many integrated solutions enabling a common operating picture (CoP) of the disaster environment was established.