Windward

At a Glance Underwriting Is a Pricing Decision Made on Incomplete Data Underwriters carry the pricing decision at two moments in the coverage process. At binding, the underwriter takes compliance’s …

At a Glance OFAC doubled its retention requirement from five to ten years, effective March 12, 2025, and stated that conflicting obligations elsewhere do not excuse compliance. The four major …

At a Glance The Panama Canal will run 32 daily transits from September 15, down from a capacity of roughly 40. The cuts are arriving during the rainy season, the …

At a Glance Five recurring complaints signal that screening volume has outgrown headcount, not that the team is underperforming. Up to 9 in 10 vessels can return a clear go …

At a Glance Windward MIOC has documented 20 confirmed sea chest contamination cases across four continents since 2017, with cumulative seizures above 2 tonnes. The method is simple. A dive …

Sustained Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining capacity have produced something not seen since the start of the war: Russia importing gasoline and diesel at scale. Windward’s analysis of shipping data, …

In Q2 2026, Windward recorded 3,667 loitering events lasting more than 12 hours above subsea cables, 3,137 prolonged dark activity events involving 2,157 unique cargo ships and tankers over 10,000 …

A vessel’s AIS track goes quiet. A ship slows and holds position outside a shipping lane. A port call shows cargo that doesn’t match what left the previous port. Each …

A vessel’s AIS track goes quiet. A ship slows and holds position outside a shipping lane. A port call shows cargo that doesn’t match what left the previous port. Each …

At a Glance Naval intelligence operates against two fundamentally different analytical problems in the same waters, with adversarial tracking and commercial monitoring requiring different questions, different behavioral baselines, and different …

At a Glance The Navy’s Maritime Operations Centers (MOCs) already receive more data than they can operationally use , with the constraint on decision advantage now sitting at the fusion …

At a Glance A falsely flagged vessel is a ship that broadcasts the flag of a country whose maritime administration has not authorized the vessel to fly it, either because …

At a Glance Compliance managers touch four of the five stages of the marine insurance coverage process, from underwriting through ongoing monitoring, claims support, and renewal. The operating environment has …

At a Glance Naval procurement conversations are framed around vessel tracking, but tracking and intelligence solve different problems, and raw AIS feeds only ever deliver the first half. AIS was …

At a Glance MINOAN DIGNITY, a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier, was struck by an unknown projectile in its engine room while transiting outbound through the Strait of Hormuz southern corridor overnight …

At a Glance Two ADNOC-affiliated vessels were struck by UAVs while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on August 14, with no injuries reported, in the second ADNOC-linked incident in under …

At a Glance The Department of the Navy’s FY27 budget request of $377.5 billion represents a 23% year-over-year increase and signals a procurement posture built around speed, modularity, and commercial …

At a Glance President Trump stated the U.S. has total control of the Strait of Hormuz via its naval blockade, while Iran said it still controls the waterway and plans …

At a Glance Two of Australia’s subsea internet cables, Indigo West and Indigo Central, were damaged inside the Submarine Cable Protection Zone off Perth over the weekend of August 9-10, …

At a Glance TIHAMAH, a Tanzanian-flagged general cargo vessel, was struck near Perim Island off Al Mokha on August 11, killing three crew members, the first fatalities from a Houthi …

At a Glance Dark activity refers to periods when a vessel stops broadcasting its Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal, during which the vessel’s position, course, and identity are not visible …

Satellite imagery has always shown you what’s in a scene. Every dot, every wake, every hull is a detection. What it hasn’t done, until now, is tell you who that …

At a Glance The Legal Landscape Is Shifting Legal commentary on Strait of Hormuz-related maritime disputes has grown consistently through 2026. Holland & Knight’s March 2026 analysis flagged the rising …

At a Glance Kharg Island’s crude export pipeline has been at a complete standstill since July 31, with all three terminals empty, zero Vortexa-recorded departures across 10 days, and the …

At a Glance The Houthis claimed a ballistic missile strike on NCC WAFA, a Saudi-flagged MR2 tanker, off Yanbu on August 5, hitting a vessel on a purely domestic Saudi …

At a Glance Ukrainian sea drones struck BOURDA, a Liberian-flagged Greek-owned Aframax tanker near Taman on August 1, one of the first confirmed strikes on a vessel not part of …

At a Glance Marine insurance is being asked to price risk in an operational environment that has changed structurally, with sanctioned fleets, degraded AIS reliability, and open conflict in the …

At a Glance GASLOG SHANGHAI, a Bermuda-flagged LNG tanker carrying Qatari LNG, was struck by a likely Iranian projectile approximately 11 nautical miles northeast of Limah, Oman, on July 31, …

At a Glance A drone struck ENERGOS WINTER, a U.S.-managed LNG floating storage unit at Damietta, Egypt, on July 29, with fire spreading to a second LNG tanker alongside. Iranian …

At a Glance The maritime security community is no longer arguing about whether AI belongs in the operational picture, but about how fast it can be trusted, deployed, and adopted …

At a Glance Hormuz recorded 6 transits on July 27, all via the northern corridor, with zero tanker crossings in either direction. Bab el-Mandeb crossings fell 22% since the July …

At a Glance The July 17, 2026 deadline for EU member states to identify critical entities under the Critical Entities Resilience (CER) Directive has passed, and notifications to designated entities …

The EU’s 21st sanctions package has been released and, as anticipated, the proposal for a full maritime services ban was shelved, allowing European shipowners and marine service providers to continue …

At a Glance The Houthis resumed attacks on July 22 following a September 2025 ceasefire, hitting or affecting four vessels across the reporting period. Houthi missile strikes hit the Saudi …

A Blockade, Declared and Partly Kinetic On July 20, Houthi-aligned forces announced a full naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, framed as retaliation for Saudi strikes on Sanaa airport. The declaration …

The Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia on July 20, escalating threats across the Red Sea corridor while Iranian forces struck three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz …

WHAT: Russia is now the leading flag for the shadow fleet after shifting some 69 sanctioned ships to its registry since November 2025 in response to the interdiction of stateless …

At a Glance Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed until further notice after the U.S. military launched a third round of strikes on July 11, hitting approximately 140 Iranian …

At a Glance U.S. Central Command struck more than 80 targets inside Iran overnight on July 7 to 8 , including air defense systems, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, …

At a Glance Two laden tankers were struck overnight on the NCAGS-approved outbound route, including AL REKAYYAT, a Marshall Islands-flagged Qatari LNG carrier, and a Saudi-owned ULCC, both running dark …

The first major maritime sanctions deadline of 2026 arrived on January 21, when the EU’s refined-products ban began applying to fuels produced in third countries from Russian crude. That deadline …

In 1776, the ocean was opaque. A ship’s captain leaving an American port for European waters could not be certain when they would arrive, or whether they would arrive at …

At a Glance The OFAC-OFSI Publication in Context The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and His Majesty’s Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) …

At a Glance Two kinetic incidents in 72 hours have tested the post-MoU operating environment, including the June 25 attack on the Singapore-flagged cargo vessel EVER LOVELY and the June …

At a Glance The IRGC published a claim on its official Telegram channel that three tankers transiting the southern corridor were ordered to turn back , with Windward identifying five …

At a Glance The Compliance Problem That Did Not Exist Five Years Ago For two decades, AIS has served as the trusted backbone of maritime compliance screening. Banks screen counterparties …

At a Glance The European Commission proposed the EU’s 21st sanctions package against Russia on June 9, 2026, targeting energy, financial services, and trade across multiple sectors, with the EU …

Windward is releasing GPS Jamming Resilience, a new platform capability that automatically identifies and suppresses the false vessel activity generated by GPS interference, before any of it reaches an analyst. …

At a Glance GPS jamming reached an estimated 978,000 events globally in Q1 2026, with 98% concentrated in the Middle East Gulf , marking the largest single-quarter concentration of maritime …

At a Glance Iran reinstated PGSA toll and clearance requirements on June 21, attempting to re-close the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the announcement, 25 AIS-visible transits were recorded on June …