Spire Global [SPIR], a provider of satellite-based radio frequency analytic solutions, this week introduced a dark shipping detection solution to track ships that have turned off or manipulated their tracking transponders.
Spire said its solution leverages its more than 100 satellites in low-earth orbit to obtain global coverage and process a range of signals in near-real-time to “pinpoint” a dark vessel’s location to help governments, intelligence and security agencies, and non-profit groups identify ships that are breaking international law.
Locating and tracking ships that have turned off their Automatic Identification System transponders or manipulated them to falsely report location data is an important feature of maritime domain awareness (MDA). Earlier this year, President Biden and the leaders of Australia, India and Japan agreed on the Indo-Pacific Partnership for MDA to include taking advantage of commercially available technologies, including AIS and RF, to help monitor the waters in the Indian Ocean, Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia.
“For a long time, having the tools to accurately identify and track ships that are attempting to hide their activities or location has been the missing key to preventing sanctions, evasion, illegal fishing, human trafficking and many more pressing societal issues,” Peter Mabson, CEO of Spire Maritime, said in a statement. “Dark shipping detection builds on our breadth of maritime tracking solutions and underscores Spire’s mission to use data that can only be collected from space to improve life on Earth.”
In September, the National Reconnaissance Office awarded study contracts for commercial RF sensing to Spire, Aurora Insight
, HawkEye 360, Kleos Space, Terran Orbital [LLAP] and Umbra Lab.