Immediately accessible digitised situational awareness (SA) has, until now, been out of reach of the critical services. As a result, they remain dependent on manual or limited approaches, which provide only a partial & historic view. Compton Services has developed a number of concepts called ‘Scout’, which indicate that a break-through to fully digital & real time situational awareness is possible. This breakthrough could, even after exploiting commercial developments in mobile communications & computing, require significant development. Its impact in areas from mountain rescue & emergency relief, through to peace-keeping & defence operations could be profound. This impact is probably most graphically illustrated by the impact that real or near real time SA could have had on casualty figures in the recent Afghanistan conflict where of the 450 British troop deaths, 226 were to improvised explosive devices (IED’s).