year 2000, there were enough civilian and government organizations worldwide using ALE that it became a de facto HF interoperability standard for situations where a priori channel and address coordination is possible. In the late 1990s, a third generation 3G ALE with significantly improved capability and performance was included in MIL-STD-188-141B, retaining backward compatibility with 2G ALE, and was adopted in NATO STANAG 4538. Civilian and non-government adoption rates are much lower than 2G ALE due to the extreme cost as compared to surplus or entry-level 2G gear as well as the significantly increased system and planning complexity necessary to realize the benefits inherent in the 3G specification. For many militaries, whose needs for maximized intra-organizational capability and capacity always strain existing systems, the additional cost and complexity of 3G are less problematic. Reliability ALE enables rapid unscheduled communication and message passing without requiring complex message centers, multiple radios and antennas, or highly trained operators. With the removal of these potential sources of failure, the tactical communication process becomes much more robust and reliable. The effects extend beyond mere force multiplication of existing communications methods; units such as helicopters, when outfitted with ALE radios, can now reliably communicate in situations where the crew are too busy to operate a traditional non-line of sight radio. This ability to enable tactical communication in conditions where dedicated trained operators and hardware are inappropriate is often considered to be the true improvement offered by ALE. ALE is a critical path toward increased interoperability between organizations. By enabling a station to participate nearly simultaneously in many different HF networks, ALE allows for convenient cross-organization message passing and monitoring without requiring dedicated separate equipment and operators for each partner organization. This dramatically reduces staffing and equipment considerations, while enabling small mobile or portable stations to participate in multiple networks and subnetworks. The result is increased resilience, decreased fragility, increased ability to communicate information effectively, and the ability to rapidly add to or replace communication points as the situation demands. When combined with Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) techniques and sufficient channels spread across the spectrum, an ALE node can provide greater than 95% success linking on the first call, nearly on par with SATCOM systems. This is significantly more reliable than cellphone infrastructure during disasters or wars yet is mostly immune to such considerations itself. Standards and protocols Global standards for ALE are based on the