Shadow Fleet
Maritime intelligence platform

See the fleet that doesn't want to be seen.

Shadow Fleet tracks dark-period vessels, ship-to-ship transfers and sanctions evasion in near real time, fusing AIS, satellite SAR and port intel into a single operational picture.

Case file · 04 / 2026
The 1400-vessel global shadow fleet
How a network of aging tankers moves sanctioned crude across three oceans.
Capabilities

Operational picture,
built for the gaps.

Five intelligence layers, one console. Built with analysts who spent careers staring at empty squares on a chart.

Detection

Dark-period detection

Surface every AIS gap that matters, filtered by region, vessel class and risk. Watch what they don't want you to see.

Imagery

Satellite SAR overlay

Cross-reference radar and optical satellite passes against the last reported position. Vessels reappear; we know where.

Network

STS & network mapping

Map ship-to-ship transfers, beneficial ownership and shell-company structures across the dark fleet's logistics web.

Live · Strait of Malacca

Vessel "Aurora Star" went dark 04:12 UTC

Last AIS ping near 03°22′N 100°17′E. Predicted course intercept in 11 hours.

The platform · 2 min tour

From dark ping to confirmed track, in under a minute.

See how analysts at sanctions-enforcement agencies use Shadow Fleet to close the gap between vessel disappearance and identification.

Impact

Numbers from the deep.

What the platform has surfaced for partners across maritime enforcement, defence intelligence and commercial risk.

Coverage
62k+
Commercial vessels under continuous tracking, refreshed every 6 minutes.
Detection
1.2M
Dark-period events detected and classified since the 2024 reset.
Network
284
Sanctioned ship-to-ship corridors mapped across 41 jurisdictions.
Response
11m
Median time from dark event to analyst-confirmed identification.
How it works

From open ocean
to operational brief.

A three-stage pipeline tuned by analysts who actually had to close the loop themselves.

Step 01

Ingest

Fuse global AIS, terrestrial radar, satellite SAR passes and port-call manifests into one stream: 18M positions a day.

Step 02

Detect

Models flag dark periods, spoofing, identity swaps and rendezvous events. Each gets a confidence score and a rationale.

Step 03

Brief

Analysts confirm. Briefs route to your console, OSINT desk or sanctions team, with the evidence trail attached.