Military Flight Filters & the Live Military Board

Summary: Filtering live traffic to military aircraft, the special-aircraft categories, and the Live Military Board — every military aircraft airborne now, with what it is doing and the frequencies it is likely working.

Switching Live Flights to Military Only unlocks a dedicated set of tools for tracking military air activity.

Type Filters

Narrow the military traffic down further by category: Fighters, Transport, Patrol, Helicopters, and Trainers. Any combination can be active at once.

Five more chips cover aircraft that aren’t military but are watched for the same reasons: Search & rescue, Police, Government (including the Home Office’s Channel surveillance aircraft), Contractors, and Air ambulance — the first four on by default, air ambulances off. In All Aircraft mode the same aircraft are ringed in their category’s colour instead.

The head of the Military Only panel counts what is up, and adds the military aircraft the networks receive but cannot place (“+ 3 seen, not placed”).

The Live Military Board

The Live military board is a board of every military aircraft airborne now, in the style of the airport boards. Open it from the shield button in the map’s button stack, from the Full board ▸ link in a military aircraft’s panel, or as its own page at ukafg.co.uk/map/?milboard=1 (Live Flights is switched on for it).

One row per aircraft:

• Callsign, with how it is spoken underneath (“Reach 572”), aircraft and class, service, unit and base.
• What it is doing, in words: live QRA, refuelling and with whom, on station and for how long, launching from which base, working a range, in a corridor, refuelling or training area, under a Swanwick Mil sector, climbing, descending, hovering.
• Altitude and rate, speed, squawk with its meaning.
• The frequencies it is likely working — Guard, the squawk’s frequency, the sector’s initial contact, the squadron’s air-to-air and ops — with an active chip when the frequency is active on the live feed (Active Mil members; see Live Military Intelligence).
• Distance from you.

A free-text filter, service and activity pickers, and sorting by activity, callsign, service, base, aircraft, altitude, speed or distance. Click a row to open the aircraft on the map.

Not placed rows, in italics with a ≈ before the callsign, list military aircraft received by Mode S or MLAT but not placed, when they are likely over the UK: where it most likely is, in words (“seen just now, not placed since; last fix 15 min ago, so within about 100 nm of there”), its squawk and squadron frequencies, and an approximate distance. They are not drawn on the map — an area is not a fix — except for an aircraft flying with a placed formation mate, which is drawn beside it.

Military Icons

Military aircraft are drawn with their own shapes — fast jets, tandem trainers, Tutors, Spitfires, Wildcats, tankers, transports, Reapers — so the type is clear at a glance.