With the discovery of gravitational waves (GW), attention has turned towards detecting counterparts to these sources. In discussions on counterpart signatures and multi-messenger follow-up strategies to GW detections, ultra-violet (UV) signatures have largely been neglected, due to UV facilities being limited to SWIFT, which lacks high-cadence UV survey capabilities. In this paper, we examine the UV signatures from merger models for the major GW sources, highlighting the need for further modelling, while presenting requirements and a design for an effective UV survey telescope. Using $u$-band models as an analogue, we find that a UV survey telescope requires a limiting magnitude of m$_{u}rm (AB)approx 24$ to fully complement the aLIGO range and sky localisation. We show that a network of small, balloon-based UV telescopes with a primary mirror diameter of 30~cm could be capable of covering the aLIGO detection distance from $sim$60--100% for BNS events and $sim$40% for BHNS events. The sensitivity of UV emission to initial conditions suggests that a UV survey telescope would provide a unique dataset, that can act as an effective diagnostic to discriminate between models.
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