Dark Ships
CASE STUDY · 2026-05-03 · DOVER_STRAIT

Dover Strait — 39 vessels imaged, 1 STS event flagged

39 vessels resolved on a single Sentinel-1 IW scene. One ship-to-ship transfer flagged via 500m proximity rule. Zero ground-truth false positives on AIS-matched targets.

## What the system saw

- **Scene**: `S1A_IW_GRDH_1SDV_20260503T174124` (descending, VV+VH polarisation)
- **Detections**: 39 vessels, all geocoded, confidence range 0.53 – 0.94
- **STS events**: 1 (two vessels within 500m, both at <2 kn, opposing headings)
- **Geofence breaches**: 0 (all in TSS corridor)
- **Spoofing alerts**: 0 on this scene

## Why it matters

The Dover TSS carries roughly 400 vessels/day. Spotting one anomalous rendezvous in a single 250×250 km SAR scene — automatically, in under 15 minutes — is the use case insurers and coast guards both care about.

## Evidence pack

Per detection: SAR chip, geo-coords, confidence, AIS match status, dossier PDF. All time-stamped and source-traceable to the original Sentinel-1 product ID.

See the AOI data

Real pipeline run — map, detections, and dossiers for Dover Strait — TSS Shipping Lane.

Open AOI dossier