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SORA Planning Guide

SORA planning gets easier when route visibility is testable before the paperwork starts.

SighThor is built to answer the terrain-and-observer question early: where does the route stay visible, where does it break, and what evidence can the team export for review?

Where teams usually get blocked

  • The route looks fine on a flat map but terrain quietly breaks observer visibility.
  • The observer plan is not stress-tested until late field work or internal review.
  • The evidence pack is rebuilt manually after the analysis instead of exported from the same workflow.

Core Pillars

What matters in SORA-style visibility planning

The exact paperwork varies by jurisdiction, but the underlying route-visibility problem is consistent.

Visibility is part of the safety case

If route visibility depends on terrain and observer position, those assumptions need evidence rather than intuition.

Terrain decides where the route breaks

Ridges, tree lines, and level changes create LOS gaps that generic route-planning tools often leave unexplained.

Observer layout is a design problem

Pilot and relay positioning should be testable before the field day so the route can be refined while costs are still low.

Exports need to support review

Mission packs and SORA-style workflows usually need maps, route segmentation, and clear descriptions of where LOS is maintained or lost.

Positioning

Use SighThor for the route-evidence layer of the workflow

This is most useful when the team needs terrain-aware LOS outputs before committing more time and cost to the full operation.

SighThor has a narrow beta role: model candidate geometric visibility and gaps against stated inputs, then prepare draft material for internal and competent-person review. It does not assign SAIL or predict authority acceptance.

FAQ

Questions operators ask before adopting the workflow

These are the discussions that usually come up when route visibility starts driving cost, safety, or review effort.

Turn a site brief into an inspectable planning draft.

Start with terrain-aware geometry, then review every source, limitation and field check.