Drone-base and counter-UAS surveillance

Drone threats are countered too late if detection begins at first flight. Overhead sensors can find the runways, shelters, RF links and patterns of life that betray UAS infrastructure long before operations begin.

The dependence this ends: Discovering launch sites after the launch

The problem is not the drone. It is the base.

A small UAS can be assembled in a barn, launched from a field, and recovered the same day. That flexibility is real. What is also real is that sustained UAS operations, the kind that matter to a defence planner, require infrastructure: prepared surfaces or cleared ground, shelter for airframes and ground-control stations, fuel or battery logistics, and RF links that repeat on predictable frequencies. None of that is invisible from orbit.

The post-2022 operational record in Ukraine and the Middle East made plain that commercial satellite imagery was being used by both sides to locate UAS operating bases, assess damage to them, and plan strikes. It also made plain the limits: revisit gaps allowed dispersal and reconstitution between passes, and cloud cover over temperate theatres could blank imagery for days. Any honest counter-UAS surveillance programme must start from those two facts simultaneously. The opportunity is real; so are the gaps.

What overhead sensors can actually see

High-resolution panchromatic optical imagery at sub-metre resolution can resolve individual aircraft shelters, revetments, ground-control antenna masts, and the wheel or skid marks that distinguish an active strip from an abandoned one. Change-detection algorithms applied across image pairs separated by days or weeks are more diagnostic than any single frame: fresh earthworks, new shadow geometry, or the appearance of vehicles at previously empty coordinates are the signals that matter.

X-band synthetic aperture radar adds two capabilities that optical cannot provide. It operates through cloud and at night, which matters enormously in temperate or monsoon climates. It also produces coherent change-detection products: interferometric comparison of two SAR passes over the same patch of ground can flag sub-centimetre surface displacement, revealing buried cable runs, compacted taxiways, or recently poured concrete pads that look undisturbed in optical imagery. Resolution limits apply: current spaceborne X-band systems resolve to roughly 0.3 to 1 metre in spotlight mode, sufficient for shelters and taxiways but not for identifying airframe type.

RF signal-mapping payloads in low Earth orbit can detect and characterise emissions from UAS control links, which typically operate in the 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz bands, as well as from video downlinks. The geolocation accuracy achievable from a single LEO satellite pass is on the order of several kilometres without a ground-truth anchor; a small constellation with time-difference-of-arrival processing can tighten that to hundreds of metres under good geometry. That is sufficient to cue optical or SAR tasking, not to provide targeting-grade coordinates. Buyers should understand this distinction before writing requirements.

Pattern-of-life analysis, correlating vehicle presence, RF activity, and optical change across multiple passes, is where the real intelligence value accumulates. A single pass showing a cleared strip is ambiguous. Twelve passes over three weeks showing vehicles arriving before dawn and departing after dusk, correlated with RF emissions on a known control frequency, is a different matter entirely.

What overhead sensors cannot do

Persistent stare is not achievable from a small LEO constellation. A two-satellite pathfinder in sun-synchronous orbit will revisit a given latitude band roughly twice per day, with passes separated by approximately twelve hours. Cloud cover in temperate climates can eliminate optical utility for days at a time. A six-to-eight satellite constellation with mixed optical and SAR coverage narrows revisit to two to four hours on average, but average revisit is not the same as guaranteed coverage at the moment of launch.

Micro-UAS operating from truly improvised sites, a flat field, a road segment, a rooftop, leave no durable infrastructure signature. Overhead surveillance of this class is not designed to catch them. The mission is specifically suited to detecting sustained, semi-permanent operating infrastructure: bases that support repeated sorties over weeks or months.

RF detection from orbit is passive and cannot jam or spoof a control link. It can characterise and geolocate emissions; interdiction remains a separate, ground-based or airborne problem. Buyers conflating detection with defeat will be disappointed.

The ambition ladder: pathfinder to operational constellation

A pathfinder mission, one or two satellites combining a panchromatic optical imager and an RF signal-mapping payload in sun-synchronous orbit, establishes national tasking authority, ground-station infrastructure, and an analyst pipeline. Revisit is limited, but the programme generates real intelligence products and, critically, trains the human chain from satellite operator to imagery analyst to intelligence consumer. Small-satellite missions of this class have publicly reported budgets in the low tens of millions of dollars; timeline from contract to first on-orbit data is typically 24 to 36 months.

An operational constellation adds a dedicated X-band SAR satellite and expands the optical and RF nodes to six to eight platforms. This compresses revisit, enables all-weather coverage, and supports time-difference-of-arrival RF geolocation with useful accuracy. Programme timelines for constellations of this scale, drawing on published national programmes such as South Korea's KOMPSAT series and Italy's COSMO-SkyMed, run to five to eight years from initial contract to full operational capability, with partial capability available from the first launches. Budgets at this scale are in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, consistent with published government space-programme disclosures.

The decision point between pathfinder and constellation is usually not budget alone. It is whether the intelligence requirement demands all-weather, sub-four-hour revisit, or whether twice-daily optical coverage with RF cueing is sufficient for the threat environment. That is a question of doctrine, not engineering.

What the customer owns and what the programme delivers

A fully handed-over programme transfers the satellites (with source-access terms agreed before signature), the ground station and mission-control facility, trained national operators and imagery analysts, and the exploitation software stack. Hardware audit rights are built into contract structure, not offered as a concession after signature.

The intelligence products, the change-detection reports, the RF characterisation outputs, and the pattern-of-life assessments, are generated by the customer's own analysts using their own systems. There is no dependency on a commercial provider deciding what to image, what to release, or what resolution to offer. That is the specific dependence this programme ends: the situation in which a government discovers a UAS operating base from open-source imagery taken by someone else's satellite, after the launches have already occurred.

What remains with Satellize or integration partners after handover is the ongoing support relationship: in-orbit anomaly consultation, software updates, and training refreshers as requested. Satellize does not retain data access or tasking authority after handover. The programme is designed to make that separation clean.

What this mission is built from

High-resolution panchromatic optical imagers: Resolves shelter construction, taxiway markings, vehicle presence and ground disturbance at sub-metre resolution for change-detection analysis.
RF signal-mapping payloads: Detects and characterises UAS control-link and video-downlink emissions, cueing optical and SAR tasking to candidate sites.
X-band SAR payloads: Provides all-weather, day-night imaging and coherent change-detection to identify prepared surfaces, buried infrastructure and recent earthworks.
Sun-synchronous orbits: Delivers consistent solar illumination geometry for optical change-detection and predictable ground-track repeat for multi-pass pattern-of-life analysis.

What you end up owning

Satellite bus or buses, with source-access terms and hardware audit rights documented in contract
National ground station and mission-control facility, built and commissioned as part of the programme
Tasking authority: the customer decides what to image and when, without reference to a commercial provider
Trained national satellite operators qualified to conduct routine mission control and anomaly response
Trained imagery and RF analysts with exploitation software licences and documentation
Full archive of all imagery and RF data collected, held on national infrastructure
Programme documentation, interface control documents and operator manuals for in-house sustainment

Handover is staged across the programme: ground-station operations transfer to national teams ahead of launch, satellite operations transfer within six to twelve months of first light, and analytics pipelines transfer as analyst training completes. After full handover, Satellize retains no tasking authority and no access to collected data. Ongoing support, anomaly consultation and software updates, is available under a separate sustainment arrangement at the customer's discretion.

Programme parameters

Pathfinder configuration	1 to 2 satellites, optical + RF payload; sun-synchronous orbit, 500 to 550 km altitude
Operational constellation	6 to 8 satellites across optical, RF and SAR nodes
Pathfinder revisit (single site)	Approximately twice daily; optical utility weather-dependent
Constellation revisit (single site)	2 to 4 hours average; SAR passes weather-independent
Optical resolution (spotlight mode)	Sub-metre panchromatic; sufficient for shelters, taxiways and vehicle classification
SAR resolution (X-band spotlight)	0.3 to 1 metre; sufficient for prepared surfaces and structural change, not airframe identification
RF geolocation accuracy	Single satellite: several kilometres; small constellation with TDOA: hundreds of metres
Pathfinder timeline	24 to 36 months from contract to first on-orbit data
Constellation timeline to full operational capability	5 to 8 years; partial capability from first launches
Ground segment	1 primary mission-control and data-reception station; optional forward-tasking terminal

Sources

One contract, one accountable engineer

Commissioned as one programme, not a stack of contracts: spacecraft, launch, ground segment, mission control, training and handover are priced together. Source-access terms and audit rights are agreed in writing before signature. Request a pathfinder mission scoping session.