V5: Next-Generation Airport & Airspace Intelligence Platform
Vision — 30-second "what does V5 do?"
- Extract and ingest surveillance data from any data source
- Handle data processing in both real-time and batch modes
- Transform the data — enriching and validating for operational use
- Designed to operate both on-premises and in cloud environments
- Display the result in web-friendly, regulatory-compliant UI
Platform Overview
V5 is a fully integrated surveillance and analytics platform purpose-built for airports and air navigation service providers. It delivers real-time aircraft tracking, operational KPIs, post-operational replay, and ATC training — all from a unified technology stack.
Architecture
The platform processes live radar/ADS-B/Mode-S data through a pipeline of microservices, achieving sub-second latency from data source to screen. Data flows through Apache Kafka into gRPC-Web endpoints, feeding modern React frontends that run in any browser — no desktop installation required.
Ready for Expansion
Comprehensive inline documentation, strict TypeScript typing, and well-structured project conventions make the codebase exceptionally suited for expansion. New product verticals can be scaffolded and developed at a fraction of the traditional cost and timeline, turning the IP into a launchpad rather than a static asset.
Products
* Supports integration with Romeo5 video recording
of on-prem installations
Platform Capabilities
Data Ingestion
Data Processing
Infrastructure
Applications
What sets V5 apart technically
- Production-proven — Product running now on real aviation data feeds for long periods with excellent SLAs, demonstrating the platform handles operational traffic at scale.
- Proven expandability — Romeo5 (live tracking), Delta5 (airport KPIs), Bravo5 (replay & analytics), and Tango5 (ATC training) share a common data pipeline and infrastructure, dramatically reducing integration cost and operational complexity.
- Sub-second real-time streaming — The pipeline is optimized for performance and reliability critical to aviation surveillance. Data flows from source through Kafka to gRPC to browser in under a second. Romeo5 renders live aircraft positions with continuous updates, not polling intervals.
- Modern frontend stack — Browser-based, responsive, and fast. No desktop installation or plugins required. Built with industry-standard web technologies that any developer can maintain.
- Cloud or on-premise, same codebase — Every service is containerized and runs identically in the cloud, on a local server, or as a standalone desktop app. No code changes between deployment targets — only configuration. Infrastructure is fully codified, with automated CI/CD pipelines for build, test, and deployment.
Technical Specifications
- Services could be written in a variety of languages
- Prototypes are written in Python
- Web is written in TypeScript
- Infrastructure as code using Terragrunt & Terraform
- Service communication through Kafka
- Inter-service data exchange via Protobuf
- Extensive tooling to maximize efficiency
- CI/CD pipelines:
- Automated testing
- Automated building with one-click manual deployment
| Romeo5 / Bravo5 | Delta5 | Tango5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontend stack | Shared across all products: Next.js React TypeScript Radix UI shadcn/ui TanStack Table Tailwind CSS | ||
| MapLibre GL Auth0 gRPC-Web Protobuf | Recharts Lucide Auth0 gRPC-Web Protobuf | Mapbox GL react-map-gl Clerk Turf.js Lucide | |
| Data layer | PostgreSQL Drizzle ORM | PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL Drizzle ORM Zod React Hook Form Server Actions |
| Pipeline | Shared microservices platform: 15+ Rust services (tokio, rdkafka, redis, prost), Kafka (AWS MSK), Redis (ElastiCache), Martin tile server, Python ETL (enroute-kpis), ASMT (Rust gRPC). Archival to S3 (Parquet/CSV). | Standalone. Scenarios seeded via CLI (tsx). PostHog for analytics. | |
| Infrastructure | Terraform Terragrunt AWS EKS Kubernetes Kustomize GitHub Actions SOPS + KMS | Docker Compose GitHub Actions | |
Romeo5, Delta5, and Bravo5 share a common backend pipeline.
Data Ingestion
Receives live surveillance feeds (ADS-B, Mode-S, ASTERIX, APRS) via TCP/UDP, AMQP, or Kafka. Decodes and normalizes raw data into a unified format for downstream processing.
Processing Pipeline
Microservices connected through Apache Kafka. Data flows through consolidation, enrichment, and capture stages — achieving sub-second latency from source to screen.
Delivery & Storage
gRPC-Web with Protobuf serves real-time and historical data to frontends. PostgreSQL for operational data, Redis for caching, S3 (Parquet/CSV) for long-term archival.
Infrastructure
Fully containerized. Terraform/Terragrunt for provisioning, Kubernetes with Kustomize overlays for orchestration, GitHub Actions for CI/CD. Same images run on cloud (AWS EKS) or on-premise (Docker Compose).
Key Takeaways
- The Victor5 platform is not just code — it is a running production system with infrastructure-as-code.
- Cloud-native infrastructure as code (Terraform + K8s) means the platform can be redeployed anywhere and scaled on demand.
- Modern stack (Rust, TypeScript, React) — industry-standard, easy to maintain.
- Expansion-ready: Adding a new airport client is a configuration exercise (config JSON + map styles + Kustomize overlay), not a development project. The on-premise model (Romeo5 Lite) enables rapid deployment combining cloud expansion with local on-premise used as backup or main.
- Seed IP for aerospace surveillance — The modular, data-source-agnostic architecture makes this a seed platform for building new surveillance and analytics products. Extend to drone tracking (UTM), military surveillance, Advanced Air Mobility, or any domain requiring real-time sensor fusion and visualization.
Why V5
- The problem — Aviation surveillance tools are fragmented, expensive, and sometimes stuck in legacy tech. Airports and ANSPs run separate systems for live tracking, replay, analytics, and training — often from different vendors, with different tech stacks, different data formats. New AI programs become challenging due to data silos and old tech stacks. V5 solves this by unifying everything into one platform with one data pipeline, completing, not substituting current legacy solutions.
- Who it serves — ATC supervisors reviewing traffic incidents, safety officers building reports (internal or for the regulator), airport ops managers tracking runway occupancy, and air traffic controllers and information offices in airports without previous air surveillance (small airports) or ground surveillance (medium-sized airports).
- What makes it 10x better — One platform, several products, sub-second latency, browser-based, cloud or on-prem. Instead of buying several separate vendor products and integrating them yourself, you get a unified stack where adding a new tool is doable at a fraction of the cost.
- The experience — Seeing traffic from everywhere, in real time — from any browser, with a certified, ATC-approved product.
- What it unlocks — A real-time sensor fusion platform that extends beyond aviation: drone tracking, military surveillance, Advanced Air Mobility — all achievable on the same pipeline.

