Ocean surveillance satellites
Maritime domain awareness from orbit
Overview
Space-based maritime domain awareness delivered under a sovereign contract: satellites tasked on your priorities, downlink to ground stations on your soil, processing inside your jurisdiction. Fuses AIS, radar, optical and RF layers into a single operating picture of your EEZ and the open ocean beyond coastal radar.
Sovereign maritime awareness from orbit, tasked on your priorities rather than a coalition's.
Capabilities
- Multi-source fusion: AIS tracks, SAR detections, RF geolocations and optical imagery merged with weather, port calls and intelligence into one operating picture
- Dark-vessel tracking: cross-matches AIS gaps against radar and RF layers to surface ships hiding their transponders
- Sovereign delivery contract: tasking on your priorities, downlink to antennas inside your borders, processing inside your jurisdiction, so no raw data leaves the country
- Serves navy, coast guard, fisheries enforcement, customs and search-and-rescue from one platform with role-based access
- Sovereign hosting and national tuning: the alerting logic is yours, not a foreign-supplied black box
- Staged build-out: a two-layer AIS + radar picture in 6–9 months, full multi-source platform in 12–18, classified national deployment in 18–24
Specifications
| Data layers | AIS / SAR / optical / RF |
| Coverage | EEZ & open ocean |
| Users | Navy / coast guard / fisheries / customs / SAR |
| Hosting | Sovereign cloud or on-premise, in-country |
| Build-out | Available under controlled technical briefing |
| Origin | Independent / non-aligned |
In depth
One operating picture from several data layers
The system merges AIS tracks, SAR detections, RF geolocations and optical imagery with weather, port calls and intelligence. The result is one operating picture covering the exclusive economic zone and the open ocean. Combining cooperative tracks with radar, RF and optical sources helps surface vessel activity that a single data layer would not show. Weather and port-call context add information around the contact, while intelligence can be brought into the same view. The system therefore joins detection, location and surrounding context instead of presenting an isolated satellite return.
Finding vessels that stop reporting
Dark-vessel tracking cross-matches AIS gaps against radar and RF layers to surface ships hiding their transponders. That function gives the same picture practical use for navy, coast guard, fisheries enforcement, customs and search and rescue, with role-based access for each user group. A detection can therefore be interpreted in the context of the authority responsible for the next action, rather than leaving every agency to assemble its own partial view. Fisheries enforcement can work from the vessel picture, customs can use it alongside port calls, and search and rescue can use the same shared maritime view without receiving identical access.
Tasking and processing under national control
Delivery is structured as a sovereign contract. Tasking is set against the customer's priorities, antennas for downlink are inside its borders, and processing takes place inside its jurisdiction so raw data does not leave the country. Hosting can use a sovereign cloud or on-premise infrastructure in-country, while national tuning keeps the alerting logic under the operator's control instead of in a foreign-supplied black box. The arrangement makes tasking, hosting, processing and alert logic part of the national configuration. It is not only a feed delivered from an external operating picture.
A staged route to the full platform
Build-out starts with a two-layer AIS and radar picture in 6 to 9 months, followed by the full multi-source platform in 12 to 18 months and a classified national deployment in 18 to 24 months. The configuration establishes tasking, national ground infrastructure, user roles and hosting for the navy, coast guard, fisheries, customs and search-and-rescue organisations that use the picture. The stages allow an initial AIS and radar operating picture to precede the wider fusion of SAR, optical and RF layers. The published path also distinguishes a full multi-source platform from a classified national deployment, rather than treating those as the same delivery state.
Users of the maritime picture
The platform is specified for five public functions with different responsibilities: navy, coast guard, fisheries enforcement, customs and search and rescue. Role-based access lets those groups work from a common picture while retaining a defined view for each user. The shared platform is the common element. The tasking priority, alerting logic and operational response remain matters for the customer to set through the sovereign configuration.
From contact to national operating picture
A contact begins as one of the available AIS, SAR, optical or RF returns and gains context through the fused picture. Weather, port calls and intelligence can sit alongside those returns, while the customer controls tasking and national alerting logic. The deployment path then places downlink antennas inside the country's borders and processing inside its jurisdiction. This connects the sensor layers to the national users without requiring raw data to leave the country.
Why Unstrat: the difference
Unstrat is the authorised global representative and distributor for this capability. It is already in service with a track record behind it, so you are buying something that has done the job elsewhere, not funding a first attempt. You are not the test bed.
Independent, non-aligned origin, with no political exposure to any major-power ecosystem.
One accountable team from first briefing through delivery and in-region sustainment.
Sovereign delivery: tasked on your waters, downlinked on your soil, processed in your jurisdiction.
How it reaches you
Related capability
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Procurement & sustainment
Classification and the end-user-certificate chain are confirmed before this capability is represented to your market.
Sourced from an independent manufacturer: no major-power disclosure rules or political conditions.
A single team responsible from first briefing through delivery: not a chain of foreign primes to integrate yourself.
Lifecycle support and operator training delivered in-region, building capability that outlasts the initial deployment.
Applications it supports
Capability comparisons
Questions buyers ask
What is the best maritime domain awareness system?
There is no single answer, because the three products on the market are not the same thing. KSAT sells a detection subscription with a 24/7 order desk, ICEYE sells radar satellites and, in Poland's case, the ground segment alongside them, and we sell the fused national picture: AIS, SAR, RF and optical merged and alerted inside your own jurisdiction. Decide first whether you are buying detections, satellites or a picture you own, then compare prices for the same deliverable.
See: Side-by-side with ICEYE and KSATOcean surveillance satellites in the catalogue
What is dark vessel detection?
A dark vessel is a ship that has switched off its AIS transponder so it does not appear on the standard tracking picture. Detecting one means finding it with a sensor that does not depend on the ship's cooperation, which is why radar and RF layers matter. Our approach cross-matches AIS gaps against radar detections and RF geolocations, so the dark vessel is surfaced as an inconsistency between layers rather than as a single unexplained return.
AIS or satellite radar: which detects vessels better?
AIS is cheap, wide and cooperative, so it shows you every ship that wants to be seen. Radar is expensive and non-cooperative, so it shows you the ones that do not, and it works through cloud, fog and darkness. Neither is sufficient alone, which is why our picture runs AIS, SAR, RF and optical together and treats the disagreement between them as the signal worth investigating.
See: Satellite against coastal-sensor surveillanceOptical against SAR imaging
How much does satellite maritime surveillance cost?
We do not publish price bands, and any figure quoted without a defined scope is guesswork. What is published gives a sense of the range: ICEYE's Polish MikroSAR agreement covers three SAR satellites with options and additional ground segment at about EUR 200 million, while a KSAT vessel detection subscription has almost no capital cost at all. Our model sits between the two, front-loading cost into ground infrastructure, fusion software and trained operators, then leaving you holding all three.
Satellite EEZ monitoring for a coast guard with limited patrol hulls
The purpose of wide-area sensing when you have few hulls is cueing: the picture tells you which of the thousand contacts is worth a fuel bill. Our platform serves navy, coast guard, fisheries enforcement, customs and search and rescue from one system with role-based access, so the same detection can task a patrol and open an enforcement file. It is a fielded capability rather than a study, running against weather, spoofing and transponder-dark shipping as daily conditions.
See: Maritime domain awareness solutionOcean surveillance capability brief
Satellite detection of illegal fishing inside national waters
Illegal fishing is usually a dark-vessel problem with a legal tail, so detection alone is not enough. The multi-source method matters here: an AIS gap corroborated by a radar detection and an RF geolocation is a much harder thing for a defence lawyer to dismiss than a single sensor return from a ship that simply lost signal. Fisheries enforcement sits on the same platform as the navy and customs, with its own access.
See: Maritime domain awareness solutionHow we compare on dark vessels
Maritime surveillance where no raw data leaves the country
That requirement rules out most of the market by design, because a subscription service downlinks on the supplier's own antennas. KSAT's network runs from Svalbard to Antarctica and its analysts work the data before you see it, which is efficient and entirely acceptable for many customers. Our contract is written the other way: tasking on your priorities, downlink to antennas inside your borders, processing inside your jurisdiction, with no raw data leaving the country.
See: Where the raw data lands, supplier by supplierSovereign ground segment against a data service
How quickly can a country stand up a maritime picture?
Our staged build-out delivers a two-layer AIS and radar picture in 6 to 9 months, the full multi-source platform in 12 to 18 months, and a classified national deployment in 18 to 24. A subscription starts faster than any of that, and if the requirement is genuinely urgent it is worth running one in parallel. A satellite procurement runs longer: the Polish MikroSAR agreement began implementation immediately, but its option on further satellites and ground segment runs 12 months from signature.
One maritime picture shared across navy, customs and fisheries
Most coastal states end up with three systems and three versions of the truth, usually because each agency procured separately. Our platform is built for the opposite: navy, coast guard, fisheries enforcement, customs and search and rescue work from the same operating picture with role-based access, so a customs analyst and a naval watchkeeper see the same track with different permissions. The alerting logic is tuned nationally rather than supplied as a fixed black box.
See: Agencies served from one platformOcean surveillance satellites
What should a coast guard in West Africa buy to detect dark vessels inside its EEZ without depending on a foreign provider?
Start with the two layers that give the fastest usable coverage, AIS and radar, and put the reception on your own soil from the beginning, because retrofitting sovereignty later means renegotiating the whole contract. Our staged build-out is designed for exactly that sequence: the two-layer picture in 6 to 9 months, the full multi-source platform with RF and optical in 12 to 18. The capability is in service in environments where spoofing and transponder-dark shipping are routine, and the operators are trained alongside the system rather than after it.
See: Ocean surveillance satellitesCompared with ICEYE and KSATMaritime domain awareness solution
We already subscribe to a vessel detection service. When does it make sense to build our own?
Do the arithmetic over the life of the requirement rather than the budget year. A subscription is very hard to beat on year-one cost, and KSAT distributes analytical results within minutes of downlink on its own network, around the clock. The recurring bill never stops, nothing accretes to your own capability, and the reception stays abroad. If you need five or ten years of enforcement evidence, compare the subscription total across that period with a national build, and count the sovereignty as a separate line rather than folding it into price.
See: Cost of ownership comparedSovereign ground segment against a data service
Will satellite detections stand up in court when we prosecute an illegal fishing case?
That depends less on sensor quality than on how the detection was assembled and who can testify to it. A single radar return attributed to a named vessel invites doubt, whereas an AIS dropout corroborated by radar and RF geolocation, held in your own records, is a much stronger evidentiary chain. Because processing happens inside your jurisdiction and the alerting logic is yours, the officials who produced the evidence are your officials, which matters when the defence asks who generated the file.
If we buy a detection subscription, who sees a suspicious track before we do?
The supplier's analysts, by design, since that is what you are paying them for. KSAT downlinks on its own network and distributes analytical results to customers, and ICEYE's ground segment is a purchasable option rather than a default. That is a reasonable arrangement until the track involves a neighbour with better diplomatic access to the supplier's capital than you have. Our contract removes the question: the downlink is on your soil and no third party sees the product before your ministry does.
Can we run a maritime surveillance programme if our navy has no space engineers?
Yes, because the skills you need are watch-floor skills rather than orbital mechanics. Operator training is delivered alongside the system, and the staged build-out gives your people a working two-layer picture to run before the full multi-source platform arrives. The system is fielded in demanding conditions rather than experimental, so what your operators learn is the live workflow, not a demonstration.
See: Ocean surveillance capability briefSpace programme training
What happens to our maritime picture if relations with the supplier's government deteriorate?
With an EU-domiciled supplier, software releases, tasking priority in a crisis and spare hardware years after signature all pass back through a member-state export process that can change with a government. ICEYE operates in the Finnish and wider EU chain, KSAT's reception network sits on Norwegian and allied territory. Our origin is non-aligned and the ground infrastructure is yours, so a disagreement is a commercial matter rather than a diplomatic one, and tasking priority during a crisis is set by your operations centre because it is your operations centre.
Ocean surveillance satellites: questions
What are Ocean surveillance satellites?
Ocean surveillance satellites are Unstrat's Sea (Maritime Domain) capability: Space-based maritime domain awareness delivered under a sovereign contract: satellites tasked on your priorities, downlink to ground stations on your soil, processing inside your jurisdiction. Fuses AIS, radar, optical and RF layers into a single operating picture of your EEZ and the open ocean beyond coastal radar.
How do Ocean surveillance satellites work?
Ocean surveillance satellites deliver their effect through Multi-source fusion: AIS tracks, SAR detections, RF geolocations and optical imagery merged with weather, port calls and intelligence into one operating picture, Dark-vessel tracking: cross-matches AIS gaps against radar and RF layers to surface ships hiding their transponders and Sovereign delivery contract: tasking on your priorities, downlink to antennas inside your borders, processing inside your jurisdiction, so no raw data leaves the country, capabilities matched to the requirement and confirmed under briefing rather than published.
Who makes Ocean surveillance satellites?
Ocean surveillance satellites are built by The Satellite Programme Partner, whose focus is satellites & sovereign space programmes. Unstrat represents The Satellite Programme Partner to government and enterprise buyers worldwide as an independent, non-aligned prime vendor.
Who uses Ocean surveillance satellites?
Government and enterprise buyers acquire Ocean surveillance satellites to address illegal fishing, drug smuggling, piracy & armed robbery at sea, port security, coastal surveillance and human trafficking & irregular migration across the maritime domain, matched to the mission and accountable to them, not to a foreign vendor's government.
Why choose Ocean surveillance satellites over a major-power alternative?
Ocean surveillance satellites are sourced from an independent, non-aligned manufacturer, so they carry no major-power disclosure rules, upgrade-locks or political ramifications. Concretely: sovereign delivery: tasked on your waters, downlinked on your soil, processed in your jurisdiction. The capability is accountable to you, not to a foreign vendor's government and its release schedule.
How are Ocean surveillance satellites procured, and where can it be exported?
Sovereign maritime awareness from orbit, tasked on your priorities rather than a coalition's. Every engagement begins with a briefing, and export eligibility is confirmed per market under briefing rather than published. Where controlled capabilities are involved, the classification and end-user-certificate chain is confirmed first. Ocean surveillance satellites are then sustained in-region by one accountable team from briefing through long-term operation.