Maritime Domain Awareness and Dark Vessels
How do governments and companies use satellites to track ships, including those that hide, and who supplies the data?
Chapter summary
Ships broadcast their identity and position by AIS, and satellites have collected AIS since the 2010s (Spire's Lemur fleet, 96 satellites in orbit on Setcoin's count, is a major source).
Key takeaways
- 1
But vessels engaged in sanctions evasion, illegal fishing or smuggling switch AIS off.
- 2
Finding these "dark vessels" combines RF geolocation of ships' radars (HawkEye 360, 39 satellites; Unseenlabs; Kleos), SAR that sees hulls at night and through cloud (ICEYE, Capella, Umbra, Sentinel-1), and optical imagery to identify them.
- 3
Navies, coast guards, fisheries agencies and sanctions enforcers are the buyers; maritime analytics firms fuse the data.
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