Situational awareness over a low bandwidth short burst data satellite system

A message handler for receiving and transmitting positional information over a short burst data (SBD) service is provided. The message handler comprises a receiver for receiving packets with positional information from one or more mobile devices over the SBD service, a memory for storing the positional information, a transmitter for sending situational awareness packets to the one or more mobile devices, computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for causing the message handler to receive the packets from the one or more mobile devices, store the positional information from the packets in the memory, select positional information based on parameters for the situational awareness packets, the selected positional information comprising at least longitude and latitude, heading and altitude for at least one mobile device, compress and combine the selected information to send in the situational awareness packets based on rules and send the situational awareness packets to the one or more mobile devices.