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In the field you usually pair Mission Control with the ground station, not with the drone. The ground station has the antenna and a WFB-ng link to a drone that has no direct network path to your laptop. Transitive enrollment makes that drone a node in Mission Control anyway, because the chain to it exists: Mission Control reaches the ground station, and the ground station reaches the drone over the radio. You do not add the drone by hand. While the chain is up, it enrolls itself.

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The connection chain

You pair with the ground station once, by hostname or IP on the LAN or through the cloud relay. The ground station is already linked to the drone over the radio. Mission Control reads the drone’s identity from the ground station’s status and registers the drone as its own node.

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What you see

The drone’s video and telemetry, which already reach the ground station over the radio, are registered under the drone’s node, not the ground station’s. One ground station and one drone read as two nodes, with the feed on the right one.

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Reach provenance

Every node states how it is reached, so you can tell a direct link, a cloud link and a relayed link apart. A relayed node also shows the health of the radio hop: a stale hop renders as stale, and a link whose radio reception is not confirmed renders as “WFB link unverified” rather than healthy.

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Several drones

One ground station can carry more than one drone. Each enrolls as its own node with its own feed and reach label, and each appears on the ground station’s Carried drones tab.

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A relayed node upgrades in place

If you later pair directly with a drone that enrolled transitively (it joins your LAN, or you add it by IP), Mission Control recognises the same device and adds the direct path to the existing node. The direct path takes precedence for display, and no duplicate appears.

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Next steps

Nodes and fleet view

Where relayed nodes and their reach appear.

Connect Mission Control

Direct and cloud connections.
Last modified on October 11, 2026