Features/Emergency Alarms
Emergency Alarms

When it matters most, the alarm finds the mesh.

ATAK's own emergency tools — 911, Ring the Bell, Troops in Contact and geo-fence breach — ride the LoRa mesh automatically. There's no LANCE button to learn and no extra app: flip the emergency switch in ATAK and the alert goes out off-grid.

LANCE · ALERT911
911 ALERT · Bravo-2
Relayed to team ✓
EMERGENCY~8 B · sent
01

Rides the stock ATAK emergency tool

LANCE listens to ATAK's normal emergency output. There's no separate alarm UI — when you trigger an emergency in ATAK, the supported alert is packaged and sent over the mesh; when you turn it off, the cancel propagates the same way. The workflow you already know just works off-grid.


02

The alerts that matter

The supported alarms map directly to ATAK's emergency types, each carrying position and priority:

EMERGENCY
911 Alert

General distress beacon at your position.

EMERGENCY
Ring the Bell

Attention / muster signal to the team.

EMERGENCY
Troops in Contact

In-contact alert for immediate awareness.

URGENT
Geo-fence Breached

Boundary-crossing alert with location.


03

Native on the receiver

On the far side, LANCE rebuilds a standard ATAK emergency event — so the stock receiver owns the toast, the alert marker, the lower-left alarm summary and the range read-out. Nothing custom to interpret. When the alert is cancelled, the matching ATAK alert is cleared cleanly through the same emergency path.


04

Tiny, and immediate when it counts

An alarm is only a handful of bytes on the air, so it moves fast even on a busy channel. Repeated identical alarms are briefly rate-limited to avoid flooding the mesh — but a cancel always bypasses that limit, because ending an alert can't wait.

Honest deliveryLike all mesh traffic, an alarm depends on RF conditions. Treat it as a strong off-grid signal, and confirm critical alerts by a second means where you can.
FAQ

Emergency alarms, answered.

How do I trigger an alarm?
Use ATAK's normal emergency tool exactly as you would on a connected network. LANCE detects the supported alarm and sends it over the mesh automatically — there's no separate LANCE control.
Which alarms are supported?
911 Alert, Ring the Bell, Troops in Contact and Geo-fence Breached, plus the matching cancel. Unsupported custom alarms are not packed into generic text — they're simply not sent.
Does cancel work over the mesh?
Yes. Turning the emergency off sends a cancel that clears the alert on remote ATAK clients through the standard emergency path, and cancels bypass rate-limiting so they're delivered immediately.
Is this a separate app or screen?
No. It's built into LANCE and rides ATAK's existing emergency tools, so there's nothing new to open or learn.

Keep the emergency channel open — off the grid.