Marshall Islands' "Operation Nightwatch" strengthens maritime sovereignty by compressing dark vessel enforcement timelines

MIMRA, working with Starboard Maritime Intelligence and Vantor, demonstrated a repeatable tip-and-cue enforcement model that moves from wide-area detection to airborne verification and interdiction in hours, not days

The Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority (MIMRA) has successfully executed Operation Nightwatch, a high-intensity maritime enforcement campaign that demonstrated a new operational standard for detecting, verifying, and interdicting non-reporting "dark" vessels across the Republic of the Marshall Islands' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

By combining low-resolution, wide-area to high-resolution, small-area satellite detection, integrated intelligence analysis, and tasking rapid air patrol, the operation significantly reduced the time between initial detection and on-scene enforcement action, strengthening the Marshall Islands' ability to assert maritime sovereignty at scale.

Enforcement officials are determining target vessels on board the FFA Kingair en route to the EEZ border.

Visual confirmation: A target vessel operating immediately adjacent to the Marshall Islands EEZ, identified during the aerial patrol.

Satellite-cued interdiction: Starboard detected a potential dark vessel within the Marshall Islands EEZ using SAR image tasked by Vantor's Sentry system. This intelligence generated a targeted search pattern for the aerial patrol.

High-resolution verification: A high-resolution Vantor image confirms a longliner operating near the EEZ boundary.

Enforcing sovereignty across a large-ocean state

For the Republic of the Marshall Islands, protecting maritime sovereignty means monitoring and enforcing action across an EEZ of more than two million square kilometers--an area far larger than can be effectively covered by patrol assets alone. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing poses a direct threat to national revenue, food systems, and marine ecosystems. Specifically, vessels can deliberately disable tracking systems to evade detection and fish illegally in national waters.

Operation Nightwatch was designed to address this challenge by enabling MIMRA to focus patrol assets on identified high-risk areas and potential dark targets, rather than relying on broad search patterns.

"IUU fishing undermines the economic and environmental security of island nations," said Glen Joseph, Managing Director of MIMRA. "Operation Nightwatch showed that by combining our enforcement expertise with trusted technology partners, we can detect vessels attempting to hide their activities and act on that intelligence fast. This approach strengthens our sovereignty and gives us a model we can apply again and again to protect our fisheries and our future."

From detection to action: A compressed enforcement cycle

At the core of Operation Nightwatch was a tip-and-cue enforcement model, in which wide-area sensors are used to detect potential dark vessels and progressively narrower images are tasked to confirm, verify, and enable enforcement action. Instead of treating satellite imagery, vessel tracking data, and patrol assets as separate inputs, the operation integrated them into a single intelligence-to-action workflow.

Using this model, the campaign was able to:

• Set the average time from initial detection to airborne verification to four hours.
• Generate six high-priority targets of interest, enabling targeted verification and interdiction rather than broad surveillance.

These results illustrate how intelligence-led enforcement can operate in large-ocean states, where distance and scale have traditionally limited patrols to cover off pre-determined survey areas.

Collaborative intelligence orchestration at the center of enforcement

Starboard Maritime Intelligence and MIMRA collaboratively designed and executed the end-to-end operational workflow underpinning Operation Nightwatch. Acting as the orchestration layer, the Starboard platform fused multiple sources--including multiple models of satellite scans, Automatic Identification System (AIS), Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), and real-time intelligence feeds--into a common operating picture that continuously prioritized vessels of concern and triggered tasking decisions.

"The breakthrough in Operation Nightwatch was accelerating the intelligence cycle," said Mortiz Lehmann, Senior Oceanographer at Starboard Maritime Intelligence. "By integrating a tightly integrated tip-and-cue workflow and dedicated communication channels, we enabled enforcement action within hours. The operation was a team effort from inception, through planning and execution. This ensured that Nightwatch was not a one-off operation--it's a repeatable blueprint for how large-ocean states can conduct dark vessel enforcement at speed."

Automated tip-and-cue satellite tasking as an enforcement enabler

A critical enabler of the operation was the automated tip-and-cue satellite tasking and multi-sensor persistent monitoring capabilities provided by Vantor.

Vantor's Sentry system, which was directly integrated into the enforcement workflow, automatically tasked the collection of early morning synthetic aperture radar (SAR) scans and cued the company's high-resolution electro-optical (EO) satellite constellation to capture detailed imagery of presumed dark vessel locations, enabling visual confirmation of vessels of interest within the same operational cycle. Over the course of Operation Nightwatch, Vantor's Sentry system detected a total of 43 vessels across the EEZ and adjacent high seas.

This automated tasking capability ensured that the intelligence remained actionable.

A repeatable model for large-ocean states

Beyond successful enforcement, a key goal of Operation Nightwatch was capacity building for all involved partners, including Starboard, Vantor, and the FFA. Conceived as a scalable template, the project not only equipped MIMRA with the experience and knowledge to conduct campaigns using commercial intelligence, sovereign decision-making, and enforcement assets, but also established a repeatable model for the wider region.