Terms, acronyms, and pattern categories

Surface and subsurface formations the SENTINEL maritime layer renders, plus the cargo and chokepoint vocabulary that goes with them.

CSGalso Carrier Strike Group

A US Navy formation centred on a Nimitz or Ford-class aircraft carrier, with embarked carrier air wing and a screen of cruisers, destroyers, and at least one fast-attack submarine. Each CSG operates as a single mobile capability node and is the principal unit of US power-projection at sea. SENTINEL renders CSGs with a carrier silhouette icon and tracks position from the United States Naval Institute fleet tracker.

ARGalso Amphibious Ready Group, MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit

A US Navy formation centred on a Wasp or America-class amphibious assault ship, escorted by an LPD and an LSD or LPD-17 derivative, with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit (~2,200 Marines plus aviation and combat support). ARGs handle non-combatant evacuation, humanitarian assistance, and amphibious operations. SENTINEL renders ARGs with a smaller LHD-style silhouette.

SAGalso Surface Action Group

A US Navy formation of three to six surface combatants (typically Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers) operating without a carrier or amphib at the centre. Often deployed for ballistic-missile defence, freedom-of-navigation operations, or theatre presence. SENTINEL renders surface combatants individually with a destroyer silhouette.

AISalso Automatic Identification System

A cooperative position-reporting system every commercial vessel above 300 gross tons must use. Each AIS transponder broadcasts position, course, speed, vessel type, MMSI, and (when set) destination on VHF marine frequencies. SENTINEL ingests AIS as a live stream and renders contacts as ship icons with arc trails behind them.

AIS-off

When a vessel deliberately disables its AIS transponder, masking its position. AIS-off is permitted in narrow legal cases (security concern, transit through pirate-active waters) but is the dominant signature of dark-fleet activity around sanctioned cargoes. SENTINEL's AIS-off detector identifies vessels that go dark in regions where they are otherwise expected to broadcast.

Dark fleet

Vessels engaged in sanctions evasion, typically transporting Iranian, Venezuelan, or Russian-origin oil. Hallmarks include AIS spoofing, ship-to-ship transfers in international waters, flag-of-convenience hopping, and OFAC-listed registry. SENTINEL surfaces OFAC-tagged vessels with a distinct colour code on the AIS layer.

Chokepoint

A maritime corridor whose narrow geometry forces concentrated vessel transit, magnifying its strategic and economic importance. The principal chokepoints SENTINEL tracks are the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, the Strait of Malacca, the Sunda and Lombok straits, and the Cape of Good Hope. Each carries its own status card with daily transit counts.

Aircraft category, mission, and pattern terminology used across the live air picture and the patterns rail.

AWACSalso Airborne Warning and Control System, E-3 Sentry, E-7 Wedgetail

A long-range radar surveillance and command-and-control aircraft. The Boeing E-3 Sentry is the dominant Western platform; the E-7 Wedgetail is its replacement in several allied air forces. AWACS aircraft fly orbits over a region of interest, tracking air activity and directing fighter sorties. They are visible on ADS-B and surface in SENTINEL with their type-specific icon.

ISRalso Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance

Mission category covering aircraft purpose-built for collection rather than strike or transport. Includes the RC-135 Rivet Joint and Cobra Ball, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the U-2 Dragon Lady, the EP-3E, and a long tail of less-cited platforms. ISR aircraft typically loiter over an area for hours; SENTINEL classifies sustained loiters as a pattern in its own right.

Tankeralso KC-135, KC-46, A330 MRTT

Aerial-refuelling aircraft. The KC-135 Stratotanker is the workhorse of the US Air Force tanker fleet; the KC-46 Pegasus is the next-generation replacement; the A330 MRTT is the dominant European and Australian platform. Tankers anchoring a strike package will fly racetrack patterns at altitude waiting to refuel inbound or outbound fighters. Three or more tankers in a single theatre simultaneously is a tanker swarm; six or more is a tanker theatre surge.

Strategic airlift

Movement of military personnel, equipment, or materiel between theatres on heavy transport aircraft (C-17 Globemaster, C-5 Galaxy, A400M Atlas, Il-76, An-124). SENTINEL classifies airlift waves automatically: a sustained set of cross-theatre transits in the same direction over a tight window. Per-direction counts are surfaced separately so a Europe-to-North-America push and the return wave appear as two events.

Compound pre-strike

Top-tier alert that fires when a large unidirectional strategic airlift overlaps two or more other distinct pattern kinds (tanker activity, ISR loiters, fighter mass-takeoff) in the same theatre within a tight window. Empirically, this combination of indicators has preceded several major US strike packages. Surfaced on the patterns rail above the standard critical severity tier.

Racetrack

A back-and-forth flight pattern where the aircraft repeats two long parallel legs joined by 180-degree turns, holding the same area indefinitely. Tankers, AWACS, and ISR aircraft all use racetracks at their loiter point. SENTINEL's rotation-aware classifier distinguishes a real racetrack from a one-off turn.

NOTAMalso Notice to Airmen

A formal aviation notice issued by the FAA or its international equivalents informing pilots of conditions affecting flight safety: closed runways, restricted airspace, navigational-aid outages, GPS testing, and military exercises. SENTINEL renders global NOTAMs as polygons. Exercise areas with a duration of days to weeks are particularly useful as a leading indicator of military activity.

TFRalso Temporary Flight Restriction

A specific NOTAM category that closes airspace for a defined period: presidential movements, sporting events, fires, hazardous spills, special-use airspace activations. SENTINEL surfaces TFRs as a distinct overlay; presidential-movement TFRs in particular are useful for tracking real-world political travel.

The classifier categories SENTINEL applies to live signals plus the hazard taxonomies that drive the weather and disasters layers.

CZIB

Conflict-Zone Information Bulletin. SENTINEL's internal layer of designated active conflict zones with associated airspace restrictions. CZIB polygons render in muted amber on the globe and contribute to the country threat-score modifier.

GDACSalso Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System

A joint UN-EU service that aggregates near-real-time alerts for natural disasters worldwide: tropical cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, wildfires. Each event carries a graded alert level (green / orange / red). SENTINEL renders GDACS escalations as polygons coloured by alert level.

FIRMSalso Fire Information for Resource Management System, NASA FIRMS

A NASA service that distributes thermal-anomaly detections from the VIIRS instruments on the Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites in near real time. SENTINEL polls all three platforms in parallel with a two-day window so a single-platform pipeline lag does not blank the layer. The detection floor is 10 megawatts of fire radiative power; detections at named infrastructure surface ahead of plain wildfires.

NHCalso National Hurricane Center

The NOAA division responsible for forecasting and issuing advisories on Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific tropical cyclones. SENTINEL renders NHC cones with five-day track forecasts, intensity classification, and the labelled position marker.

JTWCalso Joint Typhoon Warning Center

The combined US Navy and Air Force unit responsible for tropical-cyclone warnings outside NHC's area of responsibility: the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Hemisphere. SENTINEL renders active typhoons and tropical storms in those basins as labelled markers prefixed with JTWC.

GPS spoofing

Electronic warfare in which a transmitter broadcasts false GPS signals strong enough to override authentic ones, fooling receivers into reporting a fix at an attacker-chosen location. Distinct from jamming, which simply prevents acquisition. SENTINEL's spoof classifier looks for the spurious-position signature where multiple aircraft simultaneously report the same impossible coordinate, applies receiver-handoff false-positive filtering, and surfaces real spoof clusters as discrete events.

Tzeva Adom

Hebrew for "red colour"; the public alert system Israel uses for incoming rocket and missile fire. Each alert is geographically scoped to the city or settlement under threat with an approximately 3-kilometre warning radius. SENTINEL renders Tzeva Adom alerts as red-shaded circles tuned for the small radius.

BGPalso Border Gateway Protocol, route leak

The protocol autonomous systems use to exchange routing information across the public internet. A BGP route leak is when an AS announces routes it should not have advertised, redirecting traffic flows; leaks can be misconfigurations, hijacks, or coerced. SENTINEL surfaces per-country BGP leaks and outages from Cloudflare Radar.

OONIalso Open Observatory of Network Interference

A volunteer network that measures internet censorship and traffic interference per-country: blocked websites, throttled services, deep-packet-inspection events, and middlebox interference. SENTINEL renders the per-country state on the cyber tab.

MISP

An open-source threat-intelligence platform whose galaxy taxonomy catalogues named threat actors (APT groups, financially motivated criminal groups, hacktivist collectives) by country. SENTINEL surfaces the per-country threat-actor presence in the cyber tab.

Categories the SENTINEL patterns engine emits onto the live patterns rail. Each is a discrete event family with its own classifier rules and severity grading.

Tanker cluster

Three or more tanker aircraft in racetrack or sustained orbit within the same theatre. Indicates a refuel anchor for a fighter package or bomber sortie downrange.

Tanker swarm

A larger tanker concentration meeting the cluster shape requirement (orbits or racetracks) with tighter geographic bounds. Empirically tied to active strike packages rather than routine training.

Tanker theatre surge

Six or more tankers airborne in a single macro theatre regardless of whether they have settled into orbits. Catches fast-moving waves the cluster gate would miss because the tankers are still en route.

Strategic airlift

Sustained cross-theatre heavy-lift movement in a single direction over a tight window. Per-direction events fire separately so the outbound and return surges are distinct entries.

Compound pre-strike

Top-tier alert combining a strategic airlift with two or more other distinct pattern kinds (tanker activity, ISR loiters, fighter mass-takeoff) in the same theatre and time window.

GPS spoof cluster

Multiple aircraft simultaneously reporting impossible coordinates in the same hex bin. Receiver-handoff false positives in mid-ocean coverage gaps are filtered.

Industrial byproduct

Routine flare-stack burnoff at refineries, gas processing plants, and LNG terminals. Classified separately from real fires so the rail surfaces only genuinely novel infrastructure detections; the classifier learns persistent flare locations from a 90-day rolling window.

Compound infrastructure pre-strike

A subset of compound pre-strike where the airlift and tanker activity correlate with thermal-anomaly detection at a strategic infrastructure target in the same theatre. Highest severity tier.

Multilateral bodies whose membership is tracked on the country foreign-relations panel. Membership data is sourced from Wikidata, refreshed monthly.

UNalso United Nations, UNSC

The United Nations. Country panels show UN member status plus current UN Security Council seat (P5 permanent or rotating).

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 32 member states as of 2026 following Sweden and Finland accession. Country panels show NATO membership and accession year where Wikidata records it.

EUalso European Union

A political and economic union of 27 member states. Country panels surface EU membership plus EFTA membership (the four non-EU European single-market countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland).

BRICS

Originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa; expanded in 2024 with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, plus invited but unconfirmed members. The country panel surfaces current BRICS membership.

ASEAN

Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Ten member states across Southeast Asia. Country panels show ASEAN membership for relevant countries.

OPEC

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Country panels show OPEC and OPEC+ membership, with the latter capturing Russia and a wider supply-coordination arrangement.

GCCalso Gulf Cooperation Council

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. Country panels surface GCC membership for the relevant Persian Gulf states.

AUalso African Union

A continental union of 55 African states. Country panels surface AU membership and the relevant sub-regional body (ECOWAS, EAC, SADC, ECCAS).

CSTOalso Collective Security Treaty Organization

A military alliance of post-Soviet states centred on Russia: Armenia (suspended), Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan. Country panels show CSTO membership where current.

Five Eyes

Intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Country panels surface Five Eyes membership where applicable.