Once again, the goTenna team had the opportunity to attend and participate in the 2025 Tough Stump Rodeo. This annual, multi-day event is more than just a technology demonstration. It brings technology solution providers and representatives from the military, law enforcement, and first responder organizations together in an austere, off-grid environment, where they can get truly hands-on with exciting new technologies.

This event has long served as a proving ground for industry to work with tactical operators and end users to evaluate new solutions where it actually matters – outside the lab, beyond scripted demos, and inside environments where conditions are unpredictable and failure is not theoretical.

Each year, goTenna partners with Tough Stump to do more than just showcase technology. We rapidly deploy real infrastructure. During 2025’s  Rodeo, goTenna established a mobile mesh network spanning over 400 square miles of remote canyon terrain, delivering critical connectivity and situational awareness in an austere, off-grid region of Montana where terrestrial cellular networks are often unavailable or unreliable at best.

But Tough Stump has never just been a demonstration of value for goTenna. It’s a testbed to validate mission-specific use cases, stress systems at scale, and push emerging technologies to their limits.

A testbed for what’s next

The expansive terrain of rural Montana, combined with a strong ecosystem of mission-focused partners, allows goTenna to elevate our technologies well beyond controlled scenarios into unimaginable heights – sometimes, quite literally!

In 2023, goTenna partnered with Urban Sky, a leading developer of stratospheric flight and remote sensing technology, to launch goTenna Pro X2 radios thousands of feet in the air. The altitude of these radios, coupled with the presence of prepositioned relays on the ground, helped to create a mobile mesh network larger than the state of Maryland.

In 2024, goTenna used the Rodeo as a test for its EdgeRelay solution, while it was still in development. These semi-permanent relay devices blanketed the operational area with persistent mesh coverage and were remotely monitored and managed – a capability that fundamentally changed how the network was deployed and maintained in the field.

At the most recent Rodeo, we partnered with other participating technology providers – EVERYWHERE Communications, Skydio, and Rain Technology Solutions – to demonstrate the value of mobile mesh networking in search and rescue missions for first responders, military operators, and law enforcement personnel.

Real World Impact: A more effective, informed, and connected search

Search and rescue missions – by their nature – almost exclusively occur in some of the most off-grid and remote locations on the planet. When a soldier is wounded on a battlefield in a remote corner of the globe, or a missing or injured hiker needs to be located in a national park or forest, communications and situational awareness are paramount, but often unavailable.

To address this gap, goTenna leveraged the terrain and conditions at last year’s Rodeo to conduct a realistic demonstration integrating mobile mesh networking, autonomous UAS, biometric wearables, and ATAK integrations. These combined technologies allowed participants to simulate a search and rescue mission where two “missing hikers” were hidden deep within the canyon, last reported near a trailhead approximately 25 miles north of the Operations Center.

goTenna deployed four EdgeRelay devices across the canyon, resulting in 400 square miles of mesh connectivity to provide the necessary communications backbone required to conduct the mission.

Using the last known coordinates, multiple UAS providers conducted aerial searches. Upon locating the hikers, Skydio deployed an autonomous UAS to air-drop an EVERYWHERE Communications-enabled Garmin inReach Mini 2, instructing the hikers to activate the SOS function.

Once in hand, the Everywhere device began sending alerts over the iridium constellation, triggering the ATAK alarms, SMS messages, and email notifications to more than 100 users across multiple networks, immediately identifying the emergency and precise location.

A medic then received the SOS location via ATAK over the goTenna mesh network, allowing them to navigate directly to the hikers without cellular or internet connectivity. The medic was equipped with wearable biometric devices integrated with Rain’s HAIL application, enabling remote teams located 25 miles away to monitor patient vitals in real time. Using the ATAK workflows developed by Rain Technologies, the medic transmitted casualty cards and CASEVAC requests detailing injuries and required support.

These combined technologies equipped support personnel to perform a highly effective and realistic search and rescue operation in an austere and remote wilderness. The demonstration benefitted from real-time situational awareness of support personnel, reliable two-way communication over goTenna via ATAK chat, and over-the-horizon two-way communications via Everywhere.

This demonstration highlighted a mission-critical use case with direct applicability to military operations, first response, and law enforcement, where lives depend on reliable communications when legacy infrastructure is unavailable. 

We look forward to this year’s Rodeo and can’t wait to see what the Tough Stump team has in store for us.