TraiLink at Gun Runners 3 | Off-Grid Blue Force Tracking at The Compound

In late June we packed 16 TraiLink units, two command tablets, and a pair of deployment kits and headed to The Compound for Gun Runners 3, a 13 hour milsim operation fought between two factions: the Smugglers and the ERT. Dense bush, vehicles, night ops, and no cell service anywhere on the field. In other words, exactly the environment TraiLink was built for.

The goal was simple. Give both command posts live, off-grid blue force tracking (buddy tracking) for the full duration of the game, and walk away with honest feedback from the people actually using it

The morning range test

Game on was at noon, so I was out on the field by 0800 walking the play area with a couple of devices and a tablet. The AO (area of operation) measured roughly 400 m across, most of it dense trees and heavy foliage, which is about the worst case for any radio.

The result: a steady connection at every point I checked, including from the CP (command post) of both factions. No dead zones, no dropped fixes.

And that was the floor, not the ceiling. TraiLink units form a mesh network, so every device in the field relays for the others. My morning test was essentially point to point. Once 16 units went live for the game, there was plenty of extra range in reserve, because the mesh fills in the terrain between any two trackers.

Kitting out the teams

Each faction received a Rapid Deployment Kit: a hard case that carries up to 10 TraiLink units, an 8 inch command tablet, and a power bank. The idea is that a team grabs one case and their CP is up and tracking in minutes, no phones or app installs required.

Before the game I linked up with Jacob Sproul, commander of the ERT (emergency response team), and got his CP set up with the first kit. Shortly after, I met Connor Ferrigan, the RTO (radio telephone operator) for the Smugglers, and did the same on their side. By game start, both command posts had a live map running and a case of trackers ready to push out to their platoons.

13 hours on the mesh

Once the game kicked off, both teams handed TraiLinks to their platoon leaders and mounted a few in vehicles. From the CP tablet, command tracked every asset live on the TraiLink map with location updates every 5 seconds.

We had also recently shipped KML/KMZ import, so instead of the stock basemap, both CPs ran custom high resolution tiles of The Compound. Watching a commander huddle over the tablet, read the troop movements, then key up the radio to adjust the plan was exactly what we hoped to see.

I spent the night moving between the two CPs, talking with the commanders and taking notes. Multiple times I walked into the ERT command post to find the whole staff gathered around the TraiLink tablet, tracking movements and coordinating their platoons over the radio from what they saw on the map.

The push for the third drone part

Late in the night, the Smugglers had a key objective on the board: recover the third drone part. One of their elements, callsign Wartooth, found it, but the part had to be extracted by vehicle.

Because Wartooth was live on the TraiLink map, the CP knew exactly where to send the vehicle, callsign Molly Brown. Command then pushed three more squads to cover the flank: TFA, Kings, and Beavers, with the Milibois already up alongside Wartooth. Every one of those elements was a marker on the map, moving in real time.

That is the whole pitch in one moment. No cell towers, no satellites, just the mesh, and the CP coordinating six elements at night through dense bush with 5 second updates.

The numbers at ENDEX

• 16 devices running for roughly 13 hours without a break
• 5 second location updates across the whole fleet, back to both command tablets
• Zero hardware failures, zero mesh dropouts
• Roughly 76% battery remaining across the devices at end of game

That last number checks out against our advertised battery life. A 24% burn over 13 hours puts a full charge at 50+ hours of continuous tracking, right in line with the 48 hr+ we publish.

What standalone mode taught us

For this event, every unit ran in standalone mode, meaning nobody paired a phone. That was a deliberate call and it made setup painless, since no PL had to download an app before stepping off.

The tradeoff is that a lot of the system went unused. In standalone mode the PLs in the field could be tracked, but they could not see the map themselves, track each other, or send messages and notifications back to the CP. Next event we want a few platoon leaders running the app so the tracking works in both directions.

Feedback from the field

Zero issues with the hardware and the mesh is a great day, but the real reason we run events like this is the feedback. Here is the full list from the commanders and RTO, unfiltered:

• Droppable points of interest. Press and hold on the map, or use a centre screen crosshair, to drop a point, assign it a symbol and a name, and have it shared across the mesh to every device.
• Tap for details. Tap a group member's map icon to pull up their details (full name, lat/lon, speed, distance), and tap their info card to highlight their position on the map.
• NATO symbology. An option to represent group members with NATO symbols instead of the standard icons.
• Stealth mode. A setting that kills the device LEDs for night operations.
• MGRS support. Coordinate conversion to MGRS alongside lat/lon.
• Compass overlay. A heading overlay with both MGRS and lat/lon readouts.
• Image map overlays. Drop any image onto the map with pinch and zoom placement, alongside the existing KML/KMZ import.

We are not going to promise dates here, but several of these are already on the bench, and this list is now driving the roadmap.

ENDEX

Big thanks to the Gun Runners crew and The Compound for having us, and to Jacob, Connor, and both factions for putting the system through a real 13 hour operation. If you run milsim events and want live off-grid tracking at your CP, get in touch. We would love to bring the kits out.