ATAK CoT Type Browser

Anatomy

How a Cursor on Target type is built

A CoT type is a dotted path read left to right, each element narrowing what the marker is. Take a-f-G-U-C-I — a friendly ground unit, combat, infantry:

The MIL-STD-2525 symbols above are rendered in your browser by the C5ISR renderer, from ATAK's own 2525C-to-2525D translation table. The icon and iconset entries are the PNGs ATAK ships, with the CoT types its icon filters and iconset manifests assign them.

Questions

CoT types, answered

What is a CoT type?

A Cursor on Target (CoT) type is the dotted string in a CoT event's type attribute — for example a-f-G-U-C-I — that tells every TAK client what a marker is and how to draw it. ATAK, WinTAK, and iTAK all map the type onto a MIL-STD-2525 symbol or a bundled icon.

How do CoT types map to MIL-STD-2525 symbols?

ATAK converts between the two: the affiliation character of the 2525C symbol code becomes the second element of the CoT type, and the remaining function characters become the rest of the type, one per hyphen. This browser uses ATAK's own translation table and conversion code, so the types shown are exactly what ATAK produces.

Where do these symbols and icons come from?

Three sources ATAK itself ships: its MIL-STD-2525C to 2525D translation table, the fixed CoT-type-to-icon mappings in ATAK's icon filters, and the bundled iconsets — FalconView, Public Safety Air, Responder, Wildfire/GeoOps, and Incident Management.

Why do some symbols show no icon?

Roughly half of the MIL-STD-2525 entries are tactical graphics — lines, areas, and corridors that are drawn from control points on a map rather than as a single point icon. They still have valid CoT types and symbol codes, so they are listed with their geometry instead of a tile.

Can I use these CoT types on my own TAK server?

Yes. CoT types are part of the open Cursor on Target schema, so any type here works on any TAK Server, self-hosted or managed. TAKGRID runs managed TAK servers if you would rather not stand one up yourself.