Pillar Two — Visibility
TRACE
Every asset is a token. Every hand-off verified.
Trace replaces paper hand receipts with a distributed-ledger digital twin keyed to the government UII. EMCON-aware tags. Multi-party endorsement on every transfer. The custody chain stays intact when the network goes dark.
The Paper-Receipt Problem
DA Form 3161. Pen and paper. A hand-off only as auditable as the form-keeper's filing discipline.
When the form is lost — and forms are lost — the asset is written off, the unit absorbs the cost, and the audit trail terminates. Across the DoD, the financial cost of custody-record gaps is measured in billions. The operational cost — units that can't account for sensitive items in an inspection — is harder to put a number on but harder to forgive.
Trace replaces the form.
The Trace Promise
Four operational guarantees.
01
Every asset has a digital twin keyed to its UII.
No asset moves into the system without a verifiable identity.
02
Every transfer is endorsed before it commits.
No single party can move an asset alone.
03
Every transfer is immutable once endorsed.
The record cannot be rewritten — only superseded by a subsequent endorsed transfer.
04
Every record is verifiable directly.
The accountable officer, the prime, the IG, and the assessor read the same chain. No reconciliation step.
EMCON Dark-Mode Operations
The chain stays intact when the network goes dark.
Trace tags operate in EMCON dark mode without inference from network silence. When the tag is offline, custody events are recorded locally and submitted on reconnect, EMCON-first. There is no gap in the chain — only a deferred write.
This is the design pattern SOF teams asked for: a custody record that survives a tag going dark for multiple days in an environment where signaling is the threat.
Design Note
Custody integrity is the goal, not a particular mechanism. The chain remains complete across EMCON; the operator sees no missing record when the tag returns.
DoD Enterprise Integrations
Connected to the systems theater logistics teams already operate.
Trace integrates with the major DoD transportation and movement systems used by theater logistics teams:
Integration depth and direction discussed under NDA.
Federation
Designed for federation across DoD distributed-ledger networks.
Trace is designed to federate with established DoD research-laboratory distributed-ledger networks where the customer has a federation requirement. The same chain of custody satisfies multiple stakeholders — without manual export and without breaking the data model on either side.
Indoor Positioning
Centimeter-level. Advisory, not authoritative.
Trace supports high-precision indoor positioning in supported facilities — warehouses, staging areas, FOB lay-down yards. Indoor position is advisory: the authoritative custody record is the ledger transfer, not the indoor position fix. Indoor positioning is for situational awareness; the ledger is for accountability.
Inside the Ecosystem
How Trace plugs into FORGE and FORCE.
TRACE + FORGE
Verified asset state from Trace feeds FORGE's inventory, demand, and maintenance views in real time. The operator sees current state, not a reconciled-overnight snapshot.
TRACE + FORCE
Endorsed transfers in Trace are evidence-ready by design. The same custody event that satisfies a property-accountability requirement also satisfies the relevant control families in CMMC L2 — one event, one record, one audit citation.