مرصد — C-UAS Operational Surface

Corridor

Eastern Energy Belt · 7 clusters · 35 towers · 700 km

Acoustic Mesh — 4E

1.5 km mesh between towers · 2 km tripwire 5 km ahead

Historical Threats

24 documented strikes · 2016–2022 · public-record

Any sensor initiates the chain. Radar, acoustic, EO, thermal — first detection owns the track. Fusion arbitrates across modalities before alerting.

Mission Replay

Sensor Stack

Five-modality stack on every tower. Saudi-made 3D UHF radar runs primary wide-area detection. Four NIR-capable EO/PTZ cameras hold 360° azimuth with cued classification. Long-range thermal stands alone against night, dust, low-contrast targets. On-tower 4E acoustic confirms close-in. Edge AI fuses every modality at ≥ 40 TOPS with sub-500 Kbps uplink — detection is link-independent.

Validated vs Design — Sensor Bands

Sensor

Validated

Design

Origin

3D UHF Radar

vendor-restricted

10–15 km

KSA-built

EO/PTZ (×4, NIR)

~1.5 km

10 km

Partner

Thermal LWIR

~2 km (100 mm)

10 km

Partner

4E Acoustic

≤ 200 m (quad)

1–1.5 km

KSA-built

Edge AI Fusion

n/a — fusion

≥ 40 TOPS

KSA-trained

Field-validated ranges as of 2026 sit below the design targets the standardized tower is procured to. Gap-closure paths: long-focal thermal refresh (200 mm), zoom-optic + on-tower super-resolution, mesh-density triangulation for acoustic. No foreign chokepoint in the sensing path — radar, acoustic, and classifiers Kingdom-built.

Power Budget

~705 W steady state — 3D UHF radar 300 W, four EO/PTZ NIR 240 W, thermal 55 W, 4E acoustic 30 W, edge AI 30 W, network/heat 50 W. Sized to DoD requirements: 6 kW MIL-spec solar + 80 kWh LiFePO4 + 3 kW JP-8 multifuel genset (auto-start, 200 L tank). 5-day battery autonomy through worst-case dust events; ~30 days unattended with genset. JP-8 commonality with vehicle and aircraft fuel chain (DoD Single Fuel Concept).

Environmental & EMI Compliance

MIL-STD-810H environmental envelope (-32 °C to +71 °C operational; storage -46 °C to +85 °C). MIL-STD-461G EMI/EMC compliance. Tamper-evident enclosure with accelerometer alarm relayed over the ASTERIX uplink. Remote state-of-charge and genset-status telemetry on the same channel — operators see which towers are at risk before they go dark.

Coverage Geometry

10 km high-confidence radius per tower (thermal channel design bound); 15 km radar early-warning radius. Forward-line spacing 10–25 km on real border geometry — denser in high-threat segments. Cluster densification at named assets 3–10 km — rings overlap on the asset.

Layer 1 — Acoustic Mesh Tripwire

4E Sovereign Acoustic Subsystem nodes at 2 km spacing 5 km ahead of the forward line. Advanced warning before threat crosses the border. Distributed-mass posture: 2,700 nodes when the kingdom is fully meshed — the numerosity is the cost-imposition argument. Per-unit cost class places mesh below 1/14 of a tower.

Layer 2 — Fused Forward Line

Towers along the actual border geometry — real bends, real terrain-driven setbacks (5–15 km Tihama coastal, 20–40 km Asir ridge, 15–25 km Iraq desert). Catches drones as they cross. Any modality on any tower can initiate the track; fusion arbitrates.

Layer 3 — Cluster Saturation

Overlapping rings at named high-value assets: Aramco crown (Abqaiq, Hofuf), Asir pair-tower sites (adjacent-ridge masking countered with mutual-ridge coverage), Najran 6-tower hex urban-defense ring, KKMC defended-asset triangle.

Siting Principles

Forward-line spacing varies by terrain and threat — denser in active corridors, sparser in low-threat desert.
Cluster densification at named assets — cities, military bases, oil facilities.
Pair-tower siting on opposing ridges in the Asir highlands where adjacent-ridge masking demands mutual coverage.
Avoid sabkha, active dunes, flash-flood drainage paths.

Detection is link-independent. Every tower runs on-tower inference and fuses locally; the uplink carries detection payloads (ASTERIX track reports, < 500 Kbps steady state) and operator C2. Connectivity denial degrades retraining cadence and central correlation — it does not disable local detection.

Three Redundant Uplinks per Tower

Primary — Fiber + tower-to-tower microwave. Lowest latency, highest bandwidth; the path for real-time central fusion and ML-retraining round-trips back to the edge.

First fallback — LEO satellite. Sub-200 ms latency, kingdom-wide availability. Vulnerable to localised jamming in active-threat sectors.

Emergency — GEO VSAT. ~600 ms latency, narrow uplink, higher jam resistance. Adequate for edge-processed packets when both fiber and LEO are denied.

Mesh Radio & Regional Hubs

4E mesh nodes relay over LoRa-class radio to the nearest tower — no per-node satellite link required. Regional hubs (1 per 500 km of corridor) aggregate detection traffic and participate in local fusion if the central platform link degrades.

Per-Tower Status

Each tower marker carries a transport-state indicator: green (all three uplinks present), amber (one fallback degraded), red (single uplink remaining). Status reads on hover. No spider-web overlay — the operational claim ("three uplinks per tower") is falsifiable per-marker.

Active Layers

Phase 1 · Energy Belt

7 clusters · 35 towers

Phase 2 · Yemen Front

7 clusters · 56 towers

Phase 3 · Iraq Front

2 sections · 13 towers

Phase 4 · Perimeter

6 sub-borders · 40 towers

4E Acoustic Mesh

off

Historical Strikes

24 · 2016–22

REPLAY · simulated

Tower Detail

—

Sensor Bands — This Tower

Radar

15 km

EO/PTZ

1.5 / 10 km

Thermal

2 / 10 km

Acoustic

200 m / 1 km

Cyan band = field-validated range to date · Orange band = design target the tower is procured against · White tick = design ceiling. Track is normalised against the per-sensor design ceiling.

Cluster Context

Phase—

Cluster—

Tower count—

Cluster spacing—

TransportFiber + LEO + GEO

Detect DESIGN

0.15–0.40 s

radar first · UHF dwell + CFAR

Identify DESIGN

0.8–2.0 s

fusion + classifier + frame-in-view

Decide OPERATOR

human-in-the-loop

alert raise → operator acknowledge

Engage HANDOFF

< 0.2 s

cue handoff → effector layer

Saudi Border Sensor Coverage — Three-Layer Doctrine

The Threat

The Architecture

Phase Sequence

How to Operate