Also worth remembering that this kind of equipment, beyond being available to militaries, is also routinely in use by governments everywhere to enforce local RF regulations. Even in times of perfect calm, if you start illegally transmitting and disrupting legit radio activity, you can expect the local equivalent of FCC to quickly track you down.

Ku and mid ka, high ka band spectrum analyzers are no longer a $40,000 item anymore. I'm pretty confident I could put together a (starlink, kuiper, oneweb) locating kit for under $10k USD. The knowledge to run a spectrum analyzer just to locate on class of equipment could be taught to any moderately educated local police in one day.

Not much is using these bands anyway, especially in places like Iraq. Wouldn't it be even simpler to skip the spectrum analyzer and sweep the area with high-gain antennas tuned for these bands, the fox-hunting way?

Ku and ka aimed at the sky doesn't propagate like vhf, uhf. You'd need fairly high gain horn antennas to detect off-axial-aim emissions.

True, but jamming is even easier (and cheaper) -- particularly if you aren't especially concerned about incidentally jamming nearby frequencies.