Superyacht and Private Vessel Tracking for Sanctions Enforcement
Sanctioned individuals use superyachts to move assets and circumvent travel bans. Combining AIS gap analysis, sub-metre optical identification, SAR anchorage detection, and RF geolocation closes the gaps that transponder silence is meant to create.
Sensors
- Airbus Pléiades Neo: 30 cm panchromatic resolution with 50 cm multispectral, daily revisit at mid-latitudes. Sufficient to resolve hull colour, superstructure deck layout, helipad markings and tender configuration, all of which are distinctive per vessel.
- Planet SkySat: 50 cm resolution, up to 12 tasked passes per day over a target area. Useful for rapid re-observation when a vessel is known to be in a port or anchorage and the monitoring window is short.
- ICEYE SAR (X-band): Spotlight mode achieves approximately 25 cm azimuth resolution. Detects vessel presence in anchorages regardless of cloud or darkness, and can resolve gross hull length to within a few metres, enough to distinguish a 90 m superyacht from a 60 m one.
- HawkEye 360 RF geolocation: Clusters of three formation-flying satellites detect and geolocate radio frequency emissions including AIS, satellite phone bands, X-band and S-band radar. A vessel running dark on AIS but operating its navigation radar or Inmarsat terminal remains detectable. Geolocation accuracy is published at roughly 1 to 5 km depending on signal type and geometry.
- Spire Global AIS: Global satellite AIS with historical archive. Used to establish a vessel's normal operational pattern, flag AIS gaps, and cross-reference last-known positions before a dark period begins.
What a floating roof gives away
A superyacht is not a generic object. Each vessel above roughly 50 metres has a published design, a builder's specification, and a set of dimensional and visual features that survive a flag change and a name repaint. Hull length, beam, freeboard profile, superstructure tier count, helipad position, tender garage configuration, mast arrangement and funnel shape are all legible in Pléiades Neo imagery at 30 cm resolution. The International Maritime Organization assigns a permanent IMO number to every vessel over 100 gross tonnes, and that number does not change when ownership is obscured through shell companies or when the vessel is re-registered under a flag of convenience.
The practical consequence is that optical identification is not primarily about reading the name on the hull. It is about matching a geometric and structural fingerprint against a known vessel profile derived from builder photographs, class society records, and prior satellite observations. A vessel that has switched flag state, renamed itself, and disabled its AIS still has the same distance between its bridge wing and its forward mast.
AIS silence is a signal, not an absence of one
Satellite AIS coverage from constellations such as Spire is dense enough that a gap in transmissions from a vessel with a known operational history is itself analytically meaningful. The question is not only where the vessel is, but where it stopped being visible, for how long, and what the plausible drift or steaming radius implies about its current position. A 72-hour AIS gap in the eastern Mediterranean, combined with a last-known position near a particular anchorage, constrains the search area considerably.
SAR then performs the confirmation role. ICEYE spotlight passes can be tasked over candidate anchorages within hours of a gap being flagged. At 25 cm azimuth resolution in spotlight mode, hull length is measurable and gross superstructure height is visible. The combination does not require the vessel to cooperate in any way. Cloud cover, which defeats optical sensors, is irrelevant to X-band SAR. Night anchorages, which are a common evasion tactic, are equally transparent to radar.
One honest limit: SAR cannot read a name or confirm an IMO number directly. It provides a detection and a size estimate. Optical confirmation is still needed to close the identification loop, which means a clear-sky window at some point in the monitoring cycle.
RF emissions as a secondary heartbeat
A vessel running without AIS is not necessarily running without radio frequency emissions. Navigation radar operates continuously at sea for collision avoidance. Satellite phone terminals connect to Inmarsat or Iridium networks. VSAT broadband antennas transmit. Each of these produces RF signatures detectable by HawkEye 360's formation-flying clusters, which geolocate emitters using time-difference-of-arrival across the three satellites in each cluster.
Published geolocation accuracy for HawkEye 360 is in the range of 1 to 5 km, depending on signal characteristics and satellite geometry. That is not precise enough to confirm an anchorage berth, but it is precise enough to place a vessel in a particular bay, port approach, or coastal stretch, which then cues a SAR or optical task. The value is in narrowing the search, not in providing a courtroom-grade position fix. Analysts should treat RF detections as probabilistic indicators that direct sensor tasking rather than as standalone evidence.
Registry cross-referencing and the shell-company problem
Beneficial ownership of superyachts is frequently obscured through layers of corporate structures registered in jurisdictions with limited disclosure requirements. Flag-state records, port state control databases, and commercial vessel registries such as Lloyd's List Intelligence and Equasis provide a starting point, but the chain from registered owner to sanctioned individual often requires additional open-source research.
Satellite monitoring addresses a specific and bounded part of this problem: physical location and movement. It cannot resolve corporate ownership structures. What it can do is establish that a vessel matching the profile of a named asset was present in a specific anchorage on a specific date, or that it transited a particular strait during a period when its AIS was silent. That evidence is useful to investigators and compliance teams who already have the ownership hypothesis and need corroborating physical intelligence.
Vessel name changes and repaints are common after sanctions designation. Monitoring should therefore be keyed to the IMO number and geometric profile rather than to the name painted on the stern. Pléiades Neo imagery is detailed enough to track hull colour changes over time, which are themselves worth noting as potential evasion activity.
Revisit cadence and the monitoring gap
The core operational tension in superyacht monitoring is that a 100-metre vessel travelling at 15 knots covers roughly 360 nautical miles per day. A monitoring cadence of one optical pass every 48 hours leaves a substantial positional uncertainty. The practical answer is layered: AIS provides continuous coverage when the transponder is active, RF emissions narrow the search area when it is not, SAR confirms presence in candidate anchorages within hours, and optical imaging provides identification confirmation when weather permits.
Pléiades Neo's daily revisit and Planet SkySat's ability to task up to 12 passes per day over a defined area together allow sub-24-hour optical revisit over a known or suspected location. Over open ocean, where the search area is large, optical tasking becomes impractical and SAR wide-area modes with lower resolution become the primary detection tool. Honest assessment: monitoring a vessel that is actively trying to evade detection in open ocean, with AIS off and RF emissions minimised, is genuinely difficult. The method works best when the vessel is in or near port, in an anchorage, or in a constrained geographic area.
From detection to deliverable
Compliance teams and government sanctions enforcement units typically need two things: a time-stamped position record suitable for legal proceedings, and a near-real-time alert when a vessel of interest moves or appears in a monitored area. These are different products with different latency requirements.
Satellize structures superyacht monitoring as a named-vessel watch programme: a persistent profile per vessel of interest, combining historical AIS archive, SAR detections, optical identifications, and RF cues into a single movement record. Alerts are generated when a detection occurs in a flagged geography or when an AIS gap exceeds a defined threshold. For clients who need a scoped demonstration before committing to a full programme, the practical next step is a retrospective trace on a specific vessel of interest using archived imagery and AIS data.
Typical figures
| Best optical resolution (Pléiades Neo) | 30 cm panchromatic, 50 cm multispectral |
| Best optical resolution (Planet SkySat) | 50 cm panchromatic |
| SAR resolution (ICEYE spotlight mode) | ~25 cm azimuth, ~25 cm range |
| RF geolocation accuracy (HawkEye 360) | 1 to 5 km depending on signal type and geometry |
| Optical revisit over a tasked area | Up to 12 passes/day (SkySat); daily (Pléiades Neo) |
| SAR revisit (ICEYE constellation) | Sub-hourly globally with full constellation tasking |
| Minimum detectable vessel length (SAR) | ~15 m in spotlight mode; superyachts typically 50–180 m |
| Cloud penetration | SAR and RF: full; optical: cloud-limited |
| AIS archive depth (Spire) | Multiple years of historical satellite AIS available |
| Imagery delivery latency | Typically 2–6 hours from tasking to analyst delivery for commercial optical and SAR |
Analytics Satellize can run
| Vessel identity confirmation | Geometric template matching of hull length, beam, superstructure profile and helipad position against known vessel specifications in sub-metre optical imagery | Annotated image report with confidence score and matched vessel profile, time-stamped |
| AIS gap alert and gap characterisation | Statistical anomaly detection on satellite AIS time series; gap duration, last-known position, and implied search radius calculated against vessel speed profile | Automated alert with gap metadata and candidate search-area polygon, delivered within minutes of gap threshold being exceeded |
| SAR anchorage confirmation | CFAR (constant false alarm rate) ship detection on ICEYE spotlight SAR; hull length estimated from detected object dimensions | GIS point layer with detection position, estimated hull length, and time stamp; linked to cuing event |
| RF emission cue report | HawkEye 360 emitter geolocation cross-referenced against vessel-of-interest emission profile and geographic area of interest | Probabilistic position estimate with frequency band, signal type, and geolocation uncertainty polygon |
| Movement timeline reconstruction | Fusion of AIS records, SAR detections, optical identifications, and RF cues into a chronological position record; gaps flagged with confidence intervals | PDF movement report and GIS track layer suitable for compliance or legal review |
| Hull change monitoring | Multi-date optical image differencing to detect repaints, name changes, or structural modifications; keyed to IMO number rather than vessel name | Change-detection report with before/after image pairs and annotated differences |
| Persistent watch programme | Scheduled SAR and optical tasking over known home ports, favoured anchorages, and flagged geographies; integrated with continuous AIS and RF monitoring | Weekly situation report plus real-time alerts on detection events; maintained vessel dossier updated with each new observation |
Who does the work
We can get this done for you. Satellize runs its own analyst desk and a strong science team. You do not buy a data feed and work out what it means; our people source the imagery, run the analysis described on this page, and hand you the answer with its confidence limits stated. Discuss this requirement.