Sovereign situational awareness — off-grid, off-cloud, yours.
A rugged command-centre kit that keeps you connected, aware, and decisive when the internet, the cell towers, and the power grid are gone. Built from open commodity hardware; run by a local-AI watch officer; powered by the one market-intelligence node no other kit has — Aquilla.
Every serious comms plan has four fallbacks: Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. Consilium Belli is the first kit where a local AI operator watches which layer is alive and re-configures the whole box to match — so you never lose the picture, only the bandwidth.
Listen first. The primary field radio is Haven / OpenMANET (real IP mesh — PTT, ATAK, video); Meshtastic LoRa sits beneath it as the cheap receive/beacon floor. But the discipline that matters most is free: receiving beats transmitting. Most operators over-transmit and light themselves up. The default posture is receive-only — monitor the mesh, JS8Call RX on the HF radio, ADS-B — and you key up only when you must. Reach ≠ privacy ≠ invisibility.
Step
Bearer
Mode
You still have
P — Primary
Starlink
Connected
Everything — video, ATAK, cloud sync, big AI
A — Alternate
Cellular (4G/5G)
Connected · metered
Everything, bandwidth-trimmed
C — Contingency
Haven IP mesh (+ LoRa RX)
Local
Local ATAK, PTT, position, offline AI
E — Emergency
HF (Winlink/JS8)
Austere
Global text, SITREPs, position — no infrastructure
02
How a signal travels
System blueprint. Field devices connect over local Wi-Fi to mesh nodes; the base fuses everything, runs the AI operator, and reaches the world through four tiers of backhaul.
DWG-02 · System / PACE signal flowamber = yours · cyan = integrated
03
The product line
Three assembled tiers, plus the DIY route. Prices are indicative NZD for parts — the value is the working, configured system and the software, not the box of components.
Tier I
Scout
One person, one bag — awareness + off-grid text.
~$2.5–3.5k parts
N100 mini-PC + local AI (3B)
1× Meshtastic beacon
Rugged Android + ATAK
Small LiFePO4 + folding solar
Aquilla + AI operator (lite)
Best value
Tier II
Patrol
Small team — full mesh, IP video, the AI watchstander.
~$7–11k parts
32 GB AI mini-PC (8B) or Jetson Orin
Meshtastic + 3–4 Haven IP-mesh nodes
Starlink Mini + cellular failover
2–3 kWh LiFePO4 + 800 W solar
Pelican 1550 build, full panel
Aquilla + full AI operator + ATAK
Tier III
Command
Base of operations — HF reach-back, DF, RoIP.
~$14–22k parts
Everything in Patrol, plus:
HF: IC-705 + Buddipole (Winlink/JS8)
KrakenSDR RDF sensor + array
Optional RoIP radio bridge
Fold-out console + 3 kWh + 1 kW solar
Priority support + config
DIY route (lead-gen): the full bill of materials + field manual as a paid guide — build it yourself, upgrade to the software subscription any time. This is how you buy on capability, not on a fixed box.
04
Subsystems — spec & blueprint
Every module, what it is, what it costs, and the licence note where one applies. Line renders are build references — not to scale.
CB-CASE-01
TOC Case
The chassis — rugged, panel-mounted, foam-cut
Pelican 1550/1600-class case with custom foam and a machined I/O panel: fused 12 V power, RJ45, SMA/N-type RF bulkheads, and a gland for the Starlink cable. Everything mounts inside; nothing dangles.
Pelican 1550/1600 IP67, crush-proof
GX16 / powerCON 12 V in/out
SMA / N-type RF bulkheads
~$250–450 case + panel
commodityassemble, don't fabricate
CB-MESH-IP
Haven IP-Mesh Node
The tactical backbone — "$20k MPU5 for ~$246"
Raspberry Pi 4/CM4 + Morse Micro Wi-Fi HaLow HAT on OpenWrt/OpenMANET. Self-healing IP mesh (BATMAN-adv) carrying PTT, ATAK-over-multicast, low-res video, and internet-sharing across kilometres. Build Haven 1 — Haven 2/Pi 5 isn't production-ready.
802.11ah sub-GHz HaLow
BATMAN-adv L2 self-healing
ATAK over multicast
~$420 ea × 3–4 to mesh
open-sourceNZ 915 MHz — cap TX power
CB-HF-705
HF Deep-Reach
The Emergency tier — global, no infrastructure
Icom IC-705 (10 W QRP SDR) + Buddipole portable antenna. Plugs into the mini-PC over USB for data modes: Winlink (HF email + ICS forms) and JS8Call (weak-signal chat, store-and-forward). Carries text, SITREPs and position when Starlink and cellular are both gone.
HF/6/2/70 10 W, SDR, GPS
Winlink · JS8 data over HF
NVIS / skywave regional→DX
~$1,800–2,400 radio + antenna
TX needs ham licence · RX freeopen apps (Pat/JS8)
CB-RDF-KRK
RDF Sensor
Direction finding → map bearings (passive)
KrakenSDR 5-channel coherent SDR runs real-time direction-finding; the DF→CoT bridge (yours) turns each bearing into a line-of-bearing marker in ATAK. Two units triangulate a fix. Receive-only — legal, and civilian: beacon location, interference-hunting, search & rescue.
5-ch coherent RTL-SDR
DoA DSP → bearing
→ ATAK line-of-bearing
~$850 + $150–300 array
passive/RX — no decoding contentDF→CoT bridge
CB-PWR-01
Power Plant
Run indefinitely, off-grid
2–3 kWh LiFePO4 + 570–1000 W solar through an MPPT controller to a clean, fused DC bus. Sized for ~55–80 W continuous load (~1.9 kWh/day): a full day's reserve with no sun, indefinite with it. Direct DC beats an inverter by 30–40%.
2–3 kWh LiFePO4
570–1000 W solar, MPPT
Fused DC bus XT60/Anderson
~$1,450–2,550 full plant
commodityMPPT only — no PWM
CB-SW-OPS · the moat
Aquilla + AI Operator
The watchstander — and the intel node nobody else has
Aquilla reads global markets, economics and geopolitics into a risk picture; the AI operator runs the box on the PACE plan, watching link-state and issuing notifications with action buttons — human-in-the-loop, nothing fires unattended. Off-the-shelf AI answers questions; only Aquilla reads the markets.
Aquilla intel + risk gate
PACE auto mode-switch
CoT bridges Aquilla + DF → ATAK
Subscription the recurring layer
yours · builtruns on web + box
Sensors & ISR (optional tier) — the "Lattice-lite" layer. Fuse more eyes into the same ATAK picture over the mesh: a human-flown drone (video → RTSP via MediaMTX → GPS-positioned marker with a live feed), a $50 ADS-B receiver for passive aircraft awareness, and local vision AI that auto-drops markers you confirm. The AI does the sensing and marking — it never flies the drone, and never any effector. Civilian ISR only (SAR, disaster, inspection, overwatch); NZ CAA Part 101/102 applies; no weaponisation. This is the open-source civilian equivalent of a Lattice-style fusion layer — not a defence product.
Drone Overwatch — the civilian "Skydio Scout + TAK". A drone that follows a GPS target and puts a live moving icon + video into everyone's ATAK — built from open parts (ArduPilot/PX4 + Follow‑Me mode, our MAVLink→CoT bridge → FreeTAKServer, MediaMTX for video, Meshtastic for team positions). Skydio's Scout/X2 is enterprise‑locked; this is the buildable analog. Observation only — it never flies the drone as a weapon and carries no effector; VLOS/Part 101, or Part 102 for autonomous/BVLOS.
Forward Observer (field spotter) — the field half of the system. A low-signature, person-carried kit for the scout who observes and reports back to the base: rugged EUD + ATAK on a chest rig, a low-power Meshtastic node (listen-first), an optional Bluetooth laser rangefinder and compass so ATAK computes the observed grid from where you stand, and a quick spotter-report → map-marker app that relays over the mesh. Civilian roles only — SAR advance team, wildfire spotting, survey, event safety, conservation. Observation and reporting only: no fire direction, no targeting, no weapons.
05
Build & operate
The short version of the field manual — how a kit goes from parts to standing watch.
Mount & panel the case
Foam-cut the Pelican; machine the I/O panel (power, RJ45, RF bulkheads, Starlink gland). Bolt in mini-PC, mesh gateway, power.
Wire the power plant
LiFePO4 → MPPT ← solar; fused DC bus out to every device. Verify draw ~55–80 W and a full day's reserve.
Flash the mesh
Meshtastic on the beacon nodes (AU915); OpenWrt/OpenMANET on the Haven nodes. Cap TX to the NZ limit. Bridge the base gateway to the mini-PC.
Stand up the software
Ollama + models, FreeTAKServer, Aquilla, the AI operator, the CoT bridges. Import offline maps into ATAK on the EUD.
Add HF & DF (Command tier)
IC-705 over USB → Pat/VARA + JS8Call. KrakenSDR array → DoA → DF→CoT bridge. Test Winlink to a real gateway.
Run the PACE drill
Kill Starlink, watch the operator fall to Contingency, then Emergency. Confirm queued traffic flushes when the link returns.
Operating it is one screen. The operator surfaces what matters as notifications with buttons — [Compose HF SITREP], [Plot bearing], [Ack]. You supervise; the box watches.
06
Licences & the honest line
Read before selling or transmitting. Meshtastic (915 MHz ISM) is licence-free under the NZ GURL. Wi-Fi HaLow shares the band but its US 27 dBm default exceeds NZ limits — cap it. HF (IC-705): transmitting needs a ham General Amateur Operator's Certificate + callsign; receiving is free. RDF (KrakenSDR): passive/receive is fine — never decode or divulge private message content. RoIP two-way radio needs an RSM land-mobile licence. Starlink needs its own terminal + subscription.
Civilian by design. Sold and framed for preparedness, disaster response, expeditions, journalists, NGOs, farms and forestry — not warfighting. "Consilium Belli" is the brand; the product is sovereign situational awareness. This kit is a separate venture from, and shares its intelligence engine with, the FMA-licence-track Satis Omnibus platform.
07
Engineering & operating notes
The honest items between a parts list and a kit you can trust in the field. We ship with these solved — not discovered on deployment.
Item
What we do about it
🔥 Thermal
Sealed case = heat trap. Membrane louvre vents, or stay sealed and move heat to the shell via fan + cold-plate. Sized for the hottest deployment.
🔒 HF privacy
Amateur HF is plaintext by law — the IC-705 is for reach, not secrecy. Sensitive traffic stays on the encrypted mesh/IP tiers.
📡 Emissions
Every transmit reveals you. The manual teaches emission discipline and the operator warns on excessive TX — the DF you own, others own too.
🗺️ Maps
ATAK ships no maps. Every kit includes a per-area map pack — topo + satellite tiles cached before deployment.
🛡️ Cyber
The box is a network: no default creds, host firewall, WireGuard VPN, and keys (Meshtastic PSK, ATAK data packages) rotated per deployment.
📻 Height
Range is antenna + elevation. A telescoping mast + guy kit ships with every mesh/HF/RDF build.
📚 Manual
Field manual + PACE drill + quick-start card in every kit; training available as its own line. The knowledge is the product.
🧰 Support
Defined warranty, spares kit in every tier, remote-first support (the box phones home over any live PACE tier), clear scope.
The one line: HF gives you reach, the mesh/IP tiers give you privacy, and nothing gives you invisibility — plan emissions accordingly.