Field Manual

Map Warfare is a milspec-compliant tactical mapping platform for strategic planning, team coordination and field operations. This manual walks through every module shipped in the Android application and explains how to deploy them in the field.

You do not need an account, a subscription or an internet connection to operate the app. If you are holding a phone with Map Warfare installed, you have everything you need to read coordinates, plan routes and coordinate with your squad.

On first launch, Map Warfare requests location permission. Grant it once and the callsign HUD will lock onto your position. If you deny access, you can still plan on the map — only your own marker will be hidden.

1. Install from Google Play and open the app.
2. Accept location permission (recommended: “While using”).
3. Pick a basemap from the bottom-right layer switcher — satellite is the default for first deployment.
4. Long-press anywhere on the map to drop your first waypoint. It is cached on-device immediately.

Coordinates in Map Warfare default to the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS). A single grid cell is uniquely identified by a zone designator, a 100,000-meter square and a numeric offset. The HUD at the top of the screen reads this aloud in real time.

Tap the callsign HUD to cycle between MGRS, UTM and WGS84 (decimal degrees). The format you choose persists across app restarts. When you share a waypoint, the receiving operator sees it in their own preferred format — no translation step required.

Map Warfare ships with four basemap tiles: satellite, topographic, street and hybrid. Switch between them from the layer button in the bottom-right. The active layer tints the HUD accent to make it obvious at a glance which map you are operating on.

Each basemap is cacheable for offline operations. See Offline mission caching for how to pre-download a mission area before going into a denied environment.

The callsign HUD is the permanent band across the top of the map. It displays your callsign, current coordinates, bearing, speed and mean sea level. Every field is reachable with gloves on and readable from a prone position.

Set your callsign from Settings → Operator. It syncs to your squad channel automatically the next time a teammate comes into range. Callsigns are stored on-device; Map Warfare never writes them to a remote server.

A squad in Map Warfare is a group of operators sharing a single tactical picture. Positions, waypoints and geo-fences are mirrored across every device in the squad. Create a squad from the radio icon in the top-left and invite teammates with a six-digit channel code.

Ranges between squad members are drawn automatically as thin lines annotated with distance in meters. You can suppress a specific member's range line by long-pressing their marker and choosing Hide range.

The weather overlay adds wind, temperature, precipitation and a 24-hour forecast window over your mission area. Wind is drawn as vectorised barbs scaled to current speed; precipitation uses a radar-style heatmap.

Toggle the overlay from the layer switcher. Forecast data is fetched once per launch and cached for the duration of the session, so it remains available even if your connection drops mid-mission.

Range and line tools let you draw distance measurements, sectors and line-of-sight arcs directly onto the map. Tap the ruler icon and place anchors with single taps; double-tap to close a polygon.

Each drawn shape persists as a layer you can name, hide or export. Layers are listed in the side panel and can be toggled individually so a cluttered map stays legible in the middle of an operation.

A geo-fence is a polygon or circle around an area of operations. When a squad member crosses the fence, everyone receives a silent notification with the member's callsign and the crossing bearing.

Geo-fences are shared across the squad by default. To keep a fence local to your device only, long-press it and toggle Private.

Before going into a denied environment, pre-cache the mission area. Open the layer switcher, hold the current basemap and choose Cache area. Draw a bounding box on the map and confirm. Tiles up to zoom level 17 are downloaded in the background.

Cached areas are listed under Settings → Offline. They are stored unencrypted on internal storage — if your device is hostile, remove cached areas before surrendering the hardware.

Any waypoint, polygon or geo-fence can be shared outside the squad channel. Long-press the marker, pick Share and select a target — clipboard, SMS, messaging app or NATO-format plain text.

Shared strings include the callsign, timestamp and coordinate in the receiver's preferred format. If the recipient also runs Map Warfare, the waypoint is reconstructed as a proper map object on their side.

Map Warfare is designed to be operated with one thumb. The full gesture set is deliberately small so it remains muscle-memory under stress:

• Long-press — drop a waypoint at the pressed location.
• Two-finger tap — zoom out one level.
• Two-finger rotate — rotate the map, held to lock bearing.
• Swipe from right edge — open the layer panel.
• Double-tap HUD — cycle coordinate format.

Map Warfare collects no personal information. There is no account, no telemetry and no advertising identifier. All squad traffic is encrypted in transit; everything else runs locally on the device.

See the Privacy Policy for the full data handling policy.