Windward, the world’s leading company in Maritime AI intelligence, and Vantor, the top supplier of all-in-one spatial intelligence, have announced a strategic partnership to combine Vantor’s space-based Sentry continuous monitoring system with the Windward platform. As a result, there will be a fully automated, end-to-end solution capable of detecting, fingerprinting, and tracking maritime activities on a global scale.
Throughout the years, Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) has been struggling due to scattered data and unlinked workflows. In most cases, analysts have a hard time keeping “custody” of vessels because they manually have to fill the gaps between AIS (Automatic Identification System), radio frequency (RF) data, and satellite imagery. Hence, this fragmentation is one of the reasons why “dark” vessels which turn off their transponders to hide illicit activities, most of the time, get through.
The Windward-Vantor integration eliminates these seams, creating a continuous intelligence loop that connects vessel detection, identity, and behavior into a single, decision-ready system.
“From the Indo-Pacific to the Arctic, maritime activity is becoming more contested and complex, and adversaries are exploiting the seams between sensors, disabling AIS and masking identity faster than traditional workflows can keep pace,” said Peter Wilczynski, Chief Product Officer at Vantor. “Windward has built a powerful intelligence layer that unifies maritime signals, and with Sentry, we’re adding the orchestration and identity layer that closes that gap to create an end-to-end monitoring system that delivers automated, persistent intelligence at the pace of real-world activity.”
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Closing the Loop: Automated “Tip-and-Cue” Workflows
Sentry leverages Vantor’s high-resolution electro-optical (EO) constellation and third-party synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to drive automated multi-sensor tasking. The system uses seamless SAR-to-EO “tip-and-cue” workflows, allowing operators to move from initial detection to visual confirmation without manual intervention.
Key features of the integrated solution include:
AI-Powered Fingerprinting: Generates a unique, canonical identity for vessels based on imagery-derived characteristics, maintaining custody even when AIS is disabled.
Fused Operational Picture: Combines Vantor’s visual fingerprints with Windward’s deep behavioral analytics and RF data for high-confidence tracking.
Port Infrastructure Analysis: Extends monitoring to global ports, using Vantor’s 20-year satellite archive to establish patterns of life, assess port capacity, and explain anomalies in real-time.
“This is a significant step forward in our mission to deliver the most comprehensive, decision-ready maritime intelligence available,” said Ami Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Windward. “Dark activity has been one of the hardest problems in maritime domain awareness, no single source of intelligence is sufficient to track vessel activity. By integrating Vantor’s Sentry system, we are closing the loop between detection and identity, enabling our customers to produce high-confidence intelligence on vessels of interest continuously, even when they go dark.”
Enhanced Sovereignty and Threat Anticipation
By combining space-enabled coordination with their own AI algorithms, they are giving defense forces, police, and other commercial companies the capability to prepare for any threat and maintain sovereignty. With this surveillance capability, they can ensure that no maritime movement is merely “flagged” but comprehended and actionable despite the complexity of the setting.
