Open Source Military TAK Android App Supports RTL-SDR ADS-B Tracking
ATAK (Android Tactical Assault Kit) is an Android app used by some branches of the US military for visualizing geospatial information such as enemy and friendly positions, as well as any other information of interest. The civilian version of ATAK (CivTAK) was recently open sourced in 2020 and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
The software has a huge number of features for coordinating teams, planning operations and visualizing information. It can even network via handheld, or ham radios or a Meshtastic LoRa network if a central server and internet connection is unavailable. Of note is that their plugin page references the possibility of using a plugin that uses RTL-SDR hardware for ADS-B aircraft tracking. However, it appears that the plugin needs to be purchased from tak.gov. We suspect that in the future there will be more RTL-SDR compatible plugins available.
Not so much “purchased” as “authorized” from tak.gov.
Civilians can get an account on tak.gov and download the apps and a bunch of plugins, but not all of them.
The ADSB plugin is not available to me on tak.gov as a civilian, so the assumption is that government users do have that plugin available.
Yes. A one star trash on GP.