How a Drone Pilot Built a Blue Force Tracking App with Emergent

Mark Surgeon is a drone pilot and operations manager at a 500-person security company in Pretoria, South Africa. For four years, he has worked above the action, observing ground teams as they conduct operations alongside law enforcement. The vantage point gave him a clear view of how his team coordinated in the field, and an equally clear view of where that coordination broke down.

He had long envisioned a purpose-built tracking platform that could give every operator and commander real-time visibility into the team's positions. The technology to do it existed, but the options available were either consumer apps that fell short or military-grade systems priced for government contracts. When he discovered Emergent through an Instagram ad and compared it against Base44, he chose the platform that looked like the better fit and set out to build the solution himself, without writing a single line of code.

Challenges

Life360 and WhatsApp could track the team, but couldn't talk back to them

Mark's team had been using Life360 and WhatsApp's live location sharing to track each other during operations. Both tools showed where people were. Neither allowed the kind of bidirectional communication the job actually required. If Mark spotted a suspect from his drone, he had no way to drop a marker on the map and direct ground operators to that position. The information flow was one-directional: he could observe the team, but he couldn't push intelligence back to them through the same platform.

For a security operation coordinating with law enforcement, that gap is not a minor inconvenience. It is a fundamental limitation. The team needed a shared operational view where any member could place markers, share context, and navigate toward points of interest, all within a single interface.

Military-grade platforms could do the job, but cost roughly $800 per user

Platforms that offer real-time team tracking with two-way communication do exist, but they are built for military use. Mark estimated the cost at roughly $800 per user. "Their clients are the US government," he said. "It's not something we as a small security company can afford."

Hiring a developer could solve the problem, but the budget wasn't there

Hiring a developer was not a viable path either. Mark had previously worked at a web design company and understood what outside development would cost. The math did not work for a tool he was building on his own initiative, without a development budget from his employer.

Solution

A shared map with two-way tactical intelligence

Using Emergent, Mark built a blue force tracker: a native application that lets every member of his security team share their real-time location on a central map. The platform is bidirectional. Any user can see where the rest of the team is positioned, and any user can drop a marker to flag a location, whether that is a suspect's hiding spot observed from a drone or a rendezvous point for ground units. Team members can then navigate directly to those markers.

The result is a shared operational picture tailored to his team's needs: a live view of every member's position with the ability to push and pull tactical information in real time. No one on the team wrote code to build it.

Five months from concept to working product

Mark began the project around November 2025. Five months later, the original build was fully functional and had been through an extensive testing period spanning several months. At the time of his interview, he was streamlining the app's interface to improve usability ahead of a full team rollout, which he expected within a month.

The blue force tracker was not his only build on Emergent. He also created an incident reporting platform where team members can log field reports and generate summaries for any given time period. That second application was already being rolled out across the team.

Outcomes

Real-time tracking without the $800-per-user cost

The blue force tracker gives Mark's team the core functionality they needed, functionality that would otherwise have required a military-grade platform at roughly $800 per user. For even a modestly sized deployment, those costs add up quickly and were well outside the company's affordability range. Mark built his own solution on Emergent without a development budget of any kind.

Two production-grade tools in five months

In five months, working entirely on his own initiative, Mark produced two internal tools: a real-time tracking platform and an incident reporting system. Both are in active use or approaching full rollout across a 500-person team.

From internal tool to commercial product

Mark has also begun modifying the blue force tracker for commercialization, with plans to publish it on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store using a subscription model that would let other security companies sign up and host their own teams.

"Time, money, easy to use, and the fact that you can build whatever you want," Mark said when asked what Emergent unlocked for him. "Whatever I type into that bot, we can materialize."

Conclusion

Mark Surgeon had the idea for years but not the ability to build it. Emergent closed that gap. In five months, without a developer, a budget, or a line of code, he built a real-time tracking platform for his 500-person security team, put it through months of field testing, and is now preparing to commercialize it on app stores. "I've always had the idea, but not the ability," he said. "I am a creative person. I like to be able to have this platform where I can make any idea come to life."

If you work in security, defense, or field operations and need tools with the kind of functionality previously locked behind military-grade platforms, you do not need a government budget or a development team to build them. But this is not just a security story. Emergent users have built SaaS platforms, certification prep apps, sales tools, and more, each solving a problem specific to their industry that off-the-shelf software could not. Whatever your domain, if you have an idea for a tool your work depends on, Emergent lets you describe what you need and build it yourself. Start building on Emergent and turn the tool you have been planning into the one your team actually uses.