  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.
