Military Radar
Live military aircraft, emergency-service helicopters and the largest transports over Poland — with a push alert when one comes close to you.
radar-wojskowy.netlify.app
The app itself is in Polish.
What it shows
| |
|---|
| Military | aircraft tagged as military by adsb.fi, plus ones the app identifies itself — by ICAO address blocks, callsigns (RCH, SAVER, DUKE…) and squawks 7777 / 7400 |
| Service helicopters | air ambulance (LPR), police, border guard and foreign rescue services — confirmed rotorcraft only |
| Heavy aircraft | Boeing 747, An-124, An-225 |
Each category can be switched off — it then disappears from the map and stops sending alerts.
Features
- Live map — refreshed every 5 s with smooth icon movement; 40+ silhouettes (fighters, tankers, transports, helicopters, drones) coloured by altitude
- Aircraft card — photo from Planespotters, type, country, altitude with climb/descent trend, speed, flight time and likely landing airfield
- Flight trail — up to 4 hours of history stored server-side, recorded even when nobody has the app open
- Push notifications — an alert when an aircraft enters a chosen radius around your position, even with the app closed (on iPhone after adding it to the home screen)
- Inbound heavies — Boeing 747s and An-124s whose flight plan says Rzeszów (EPRZ) or Kraków (EPKK): shown on the map hours before they reach Polish airspace, with destination, estimated landing time and time to go, plus a push alert; per-airport switches
- Rare aircraft alerts — tankers, AWACS, reconnaissance, bombers and surveillance drones anywhere over Poland, regardless of your position (one alert per aircraft per 12 h)
- Overlays — Polish military airfield grounds (red), major NATO bases (purple) and 12 military training areas (orange, hatched)
- Airspace active now — military zones (TSA, TRA, D, R) reserved for specific hours right now in the Polish airspace use plan (drone corridors and all-day blanket reservations are left out), with hours, altitudes, the reserving base and aircraft type (e.g. TS7 · F-35 · Łask · 10:00–11:00)
- Airfield card — tap a military airfield to see what is planned from it today in the PANSA plan (e.g. F-35 · 10:00–12:10 · TS6, TS7) and what is airborne within 50 km
- Six base maps — dark, classic, satellite, neutral dark, satellite with labels (hybrid), terrain
- PWA — installs like a native app on phone and desktop
Data sources
| Source | Used for |
|---|
adsb.fi /v2/mil | global list of military aircraft |
adsb.fi /v2/lat/…/lon/…/dist/250 | all traffic over Poland — catches military aircraft that /mil does not tag |
| OpenSky Network | fallback when adsb.fi is down (no type or registration) |
| Planespotters.net | aircraft photos |
| Wikimedia Commons | freely licensed type photos shown when no photo of the individual airframe exists (credited on the card) |
| OpenStreetMap | airfield and training-area outlines |
| PANSA AUP/UUP | daily airspace use plan — which military zones are reserved, when and by whom (informative only) |
| adsb.lol | second global military list (different receiver network — each source has its own gaps) and lookup by aircraft type |
| adsbdb | flight routes by callsign — ADS-B itself carries no destination |
ADS-B does not carry a take-off time, so flight time counts from the earliest trail point the server knows — a lower bound, not an exact value.
How it works
flowchart LR
A[adsb.fi / OpenSky] --> F[aircraft<br/>on request, every 5 s]
A --> C[collect<br/>cron every 2 min]
F --> B[(Netlify Blobs<br/>4 h trails)]
C --> B
F --> P[PWA<br/>React + Leaflet]
B --> P
A --> N[notify<br/>cron every 1 min]
N -->|Web Push| P
| Function | Role |
|---|
aircraft | fetches and classifies traffic, returns the trail of a selected aircraft |
collect | records trails in the background every 2 minutes |
notify | checks every subscriber's radius each minute and sends push alerts |
airspace | proxies and trims the PANSA airspace use plan (no CORS upstream), cached 10 min |
inbound | serves 747s and An-124s bound for Rzeszów or Kraków |
inbound-collect | refreshes that list every 10 minutes (adsb.lol + adsbdb) so page traffic never reaches those services |
subscribe / status / test-push | subscription storage, diagnostics, test push |
Running locally
npm install
npx netlify dev # Vite + Netlify Functions
Plain npm run dev starts only the UI — the map stays empty and the status mark in the corner turns red.
Push notifications need VAPID keys (npx web-push generate-vapid-keys) — see .env.example.
npm test # vitest
npm run lint # eslint
npm run build # production build to dist/
Deployment: every push to main is built automatically on Netlify.
Project structure
netlify/functions/ aircraft, airspace, collect, notify, subscribe, status, test-push
lib/ military classification, Poland boundary, security
src/
components/ map, aircraft card, panels, SVG silhouettes
data/ airfield and training-area outlines
lib/ palette, geometry, type names, photo matching
airfields.js airfields: Polish military, civil, NATO bases
test/ vitest tests
License
Code: MIT © 2026 Maciej Poręba.
Map data and the airfield and training-area outlines in src/data/ come from © OpenStreetMap contributors and are available under the ODbL. Aircraft data belongs to adsb.fi and OpenSky Network, the airspace use plan to PANSA (Polska Agencja Żeglugi Powietrznej), photos to their authors on Planespotters.net — each under its own terms.
