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Link 11B Serial Ingest

Status: Planned

No adapter exists in gateway/src/formats/ yet. See the Status & Roadmap.

What it is

Link 11B (TADIL-B / STANAG 5511) is an older tactical data link used for ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship reporting over serial (RS-232/422) or HF radio connections. It uses fixed-format binary messages with a simpler structure than Link 16, and is point-to-point rather than networked, with a polling protocol where one station queries another.

Key message types:

  • Track reports — position, course, speed, identity
  • Reference point reports — geographic reference points
  • Status messages — link health and connectivity

Bedrock's integration

Planned. No Link 11B support exists yet. No special hardware is required — it is serial data with a defined binary format — so the intended approach is a serial adapter in gateway/src/formats/ that reads Link 11B frames from a serial port and converts track reports into WayPoint positions.

Protocol notes and the task breakdown live with the owning repo: gateway/docs/standards/link11b-serial-ingest.md.

See also