India, Aug. 26 -- Rogue vessels breaching the green rules in forbidden waters, hijacked aircraft flying off the radar, cargo ships losing control in deep seas and sending out an SOS, a crash-landed aeroplane at a remote destination - satellite imaging often fails to track these vessels, ships and craft when they go dark. That's when radio frequencies come to the rescue.

That's precisely what happened when large fleets of Chinese fishing vessels turned off their automatic identification systems (AIS) when they swarmed the waters near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Galapagos Islands in 2020, posing great threat to the preserved marine ecosystem. HawkEye 360, a US-based defence tech company, detected their radio frequency signals and fla...