In telecommunication, the term automatic link establishment (ALE) has the following meanings:

1. In high-frequency (HF) radio, the capability of a station to make contact, or initiate a circuit, between itself and another specified radio station, without human intervention and usually under processor control.

ALE techniques include automatic signaling, selective calling, and automatic handshaking. Other automatic techniques that are related to ALE are channel scanning and selection, link quality analysis (LQA), polling, sounding, message store-and-forward, address protection, and anti-spoofing.

2. In HF radio, a link control system that includes automatic scanning, selective calling, sounding, and transmit channel selection using link quality analysis data.

Optional ALE functions include polling and the exchange of orderwire commands and messages.