In military communications, a priority scheme (a) for assigning one of several precedence levels to specific calls or messages so that the system handles them in a predetermined order and time frame, (b) for gaining controlled access to network resources in which calls and messages can be preempted only by higher priority calls and messages, (c) that is recognized only within a predefined domain, and (d) in which the precedence level of a call outside the predefined domain is usually not recognized.