Track military activity alongside the conflict it belongs to
WarWatch's tracking mode puts military aircraft visible on public ADS-B data, more than a hundred known military installations, publicly reported missile launches and radio-monitoring posts on the same globe as its conflict alerts and country severity — so a flight, a base and the reporting around them can be read together rather than in three separate tools.
What the military layer shows
Military aircraft
Installations
Missile reports
SIGINT posts
Conflict alerts and country severity from the conflict layer stay visible underneath, so a flight or a launch report can be read against the reporting around it.
Where each marker comes from
| Criterion | Source type | What it is | What it is not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aircraft | Public ADS-B aggregation | Transponder broadcasts received by volunteer stations and published openly. | A radar picture. Aircraft not broadcasting, or out of receiver range, are absent. |
| Installations | Curated public list | Known military sites with a type and a coordinate. | A statement about current activity at the site. |
| Missile launches | Public alert accounts | Reports of launches as published, with their stated origin and destination. | Sensor detections. WarWatch has no detection capability of its own. |
| SIGINT | Public monitoring accounts | What hobbyist listeners reported hearing. | Intercepts, decrypts or anything collected by WarWatch. |
A flight is a data point, not a story
Military flight tracking is popular because it is one of the few sources that is genuinely primary: the aircraft itself says where it is. It is also easy to over-read. A tanker orbit or a surveillance track near a border is routine on most days and significant on a few, and the difference is only visible against the reporting from the same place and time. That is why WarWatch keeps the conflict alerts and the country’s severity trend on screen while tracking mode is open.
Who uses a military conflict tracker
- OSINT researchers who already follow ADS-B and want it beside the reporting rather than in a separate tab.
- Defence journalists watching for deployments and unusual activity around a developing story.
- Analysts building a timeline of a crisis from public signals.
- Readers of international affairs who want to see what “military activity” in a headline looks like on a map.
Limits of public military tracking
- Public ADS-B shows what broadcasts and is received. Military aircraft often do not broadcast, or broadcast with filtered or spoofed identities.
- Receiver coverage is dense over Europe and North America and sparse over oceans and much of Africa and Asia.
- Missile and SIGINT items are reports by third parties, relayed with their source; they can be wrong.
- Installation markers are locations, not activity indicators.
- Conflict alerts under the layer lag public reporting and may be revised.
The tracker’s data is queryable through the API: conflict alerts, missiles and SIGINT endpoints. A public status endpoint reports when the aircraft cache last succeeded, so an empty sky is distinguishable from a failed fetch.
Frequently asked questions
- What tools can be used to track military aircraft?
- Public ADS-B aggregators such as ADS-B Exchange and adsb.lol receive transponder broadcasts from volunteer ground stations and publish them without filtering military registrations; Flightradar24 is broader but filters more. WarWatch draws its military layer from a public ADS-B aggregator and shows the aircraft that broadcast and are received — which is a subset of what is flying.
- Does WarWatch show where units and front lines are?
- No. It shows reported events as timed alerts, military aircraft that are visible on public ADS-B, the locations of known installations and publicly reported missile launches. It does not draw front lines, unit positions or anything inferred rather than reported.
- What is a missile launch alert on WarWatch?
- A publicly reported launch — origin, reported destination, weapon type where stated — relayed from public alert accounts and shown for a limited time. It reflects what was reported, and the status field says whether the report was later resolved.
- What are the SIGINT markers?
- Radio-monitoring posts published by public accounts that report callsigns, aircraft types and frequencies heard. WarWatch relays them as they were posted, with the source, and lets them expire. They are hobbyist observations, not intercepts by WarWatch.
- Is the tracker free?
- Conflict alerts, country severity and the dossiers are free. Tracking mode — aircraft, installations, missile reports and SIGINT posts — is part of the premium plan.
Related resources
See the map
The live conflict map, the country dossiers and the intel feed are free to open. Premium adds critical alerts, the strait monitors, the supply-chain figures and the daily report by email.
WarWatch (war-watch.com) is a global conflict intelligence platform built on publicly available information: news wires, regional press, public OSINT feeds and open datasets. Conflict information changes quickly and early reports are often incomplete or later revised. Nothing on this site is a substitute for official security guidance, and no event shown here should be treated as independently confirmed unless a source says so.