Use cases
Contact reports (SALUTE)
A contact report tells higher headquarters what a patrol has seen. The SALUTE format (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) keeps it brief. Gridnorth turns a spoken or typed account into that structure and asks about anything it could not place.
The six fields
| Field | What it holds | Where spoken accounts go wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Size | How many | Estimates such as "about a dozen" need a number or a range. |
| Activity | What they are doing | Often described at length, then summarized inconsistently. |
| Location | Where, as a grid reference | Digits read out one at a time are easy to mishear. |
| Unit | Who they appear to be | Free text, with uncertainty that should be stated. |
| Time | When it was seen | Times and dates said in several styles. |
| Equipment | What they have | Many terms for the same thing. |
Where Gridnorth helps
People under pressure report in the order they saw things, not in the order of the format. Gridnorth reads the whole account, fills the six fields, and flags any it could not fill with confidence. Location and time are where we expect the most flags, since digits read out one at a time were the main source of errors in testing.
Status
The SALUTE record was one of three stand-in message types in the laboratory evaluation, on text inputs only. It is not an APP-11 definition.
Last reviewed September 29, 2026