A new near-field communication (NFC) tag from US startup Rune Technologies is designed to help troops track personnel, casualties, and supplies across the battlefield without relying on GPS, cloud connectivity, or satellite links.
Called TyrSense, the compact device works with the company’s TyrOS software to log the location and status of personnel or cargo every time the tag is scanned during a handoff.
The system continues operating in denied, degraded, intermittent, or low-bandwidth environments, helping units maintain visibility even when communications are disrupted.
By replacing paper logs and other manual tracking methods, TyrSense aims to speed up battlefield accountability while reducing reporting delays as personnel and supplies move between units.
“We started in the sustainment lane, and the same broken process shows up everywhere a unit counts what it has,” said David Tuttle, co-founder and chief executive officer of Rune Technologies.
“TyrSense puts a simple tag on a person or a pallet and turns a morning of manual reporting into a single scan. That’s the kind of problem we exist to remove.”
Modernizing Three Core Workflows
TyrSense targets three workflows that are still largely managed manually: personnel accountability, medical evacuation, and cargo tracking.
Commanders can update a service member’s duty status, while medical teams can record each casualty transfer from the point of injury through successive levels of care.
For logistics operations, tags attached to pallets create a digital record as shipments move through each node in the distribution network.
“A tag has to work in a vehicle and with no signal, because that’s where these counts happen,” said Peter Goldsborough, co-founder and chief technology officer of Rune Technologies.
“We built TyrSense so the scan registers at the edge and reaches TyrOS the moment a connection is there. The hardware is deliberately simple. The value is what TyrOS does with the data.”
