Russian invasion: How satellite imagery affects the course of the war

The propaganda war over the alleged war crimes committed by Bucha is ongoing. Russia denies its soldiers are responsible, instead accusing Ukraine of orchestrating the atrocities in the Kyiv suburb. Satellite images are already making a significant contribution to clarifying the events. Images from space that allow, for example, a comparison between the situation in Bucha in the first days of the war and the situation in the past few days when the terrible events became known.

Which is a blessing for the investigators (also for the verification experts from RTL and star), but also makes some people skeptical. The question is occasionally asked, not only in social media: Why are such satellite images appearing now? And do they affect the course of battles?

The well-known recordings from the war zone come from commercial providers such as Black Sky or Planet. Airbus is also active in this segment with the “Pleiades” and “Pleiades Neo” orbiters. In principle, the images are not only appearing now, parts of them are available anyway and are now proving to be helpful for the investigations into the war crimes. However, regions can also be targeted, for example at the request of customers who include secret services.

; Tendency rapidly increasing. Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone wants to ensure comprehensive Internet coverage across the globe with 42,000 artificial earth satellites in the next few years, thereby dramatically increasing the number of satellites. In addition to supplying the Internet, the satellites are also used for communication and navigation, various research purposes and intensive earth observation. The surface of our earth has been scanned and photographed practically constantly for years.

Maxar Satellites: Observers of potential crime scenes

Since the beginning of the war, the US company Maxar Technologies based in Westminster/Colorado, one of the largest commercial satellite operators, has drawn the public’s attention to images from space in Ukraine. Maxar satellite images already showed the Russian deployment and now refuted Moscow’s claims that the bodies of killed civilians were only placed after the Russian military withdrew from Bucha. Since 2007, the company has been keeping an eye on the earth, primarily with its “WorldView” series of high-resolution satellites.

The recordings that are currently being distributed via the media originate, among other things, from the “WorldView 3” satellite, one of the most powerful earth observers currently available. The research device has been in orbit since August 2014 and provides valuable data for earth observation. Maxar’s flying eyes alone can cover five million square meters of the earth’s surface every day. The resolution is enormous: objects with a size of 30 centimeters can be clearly captured from space. At the latest with the , which according to the company is currently being gradually put into orbit, real-time observations should be possible in practice; Regions can then be scanned up to 15 times a day.

Cooperation with secret services

In no previous war have satellite images played such a large role as they did in the Ukraine war. Hardly any troop movement remains undetected. Secret services that operate their own high-performance satellites, the recordings of which generally remain secret, see no problem in this. On the contrary: the public recordings accessible on the Internet enable the services to make their own findings public without having to reveal the sources.

Rather, there is a close interaction. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a US intelligence agency under the CIA that is responsible for all image reconnaissance, is Maxar’s largest customer. The NGO secured first access to the image data for 300 million dollars a year; also a right of co-determination on which areas the satellite cameras are aimed.

“We work with 100 companies, currently use imagery from at least 200 commercial satellites and have about 20 different analysis services in our pipeline,” David Gauthier of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which is responsible for military, intelligence and commercial mapping and mapping reconnaissance is responsible. Gauthier spoke at the 37th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, which ends this Thursday.

As Russia prepared for the invasion, we and the NGO reinforced and accelerated various efforts that already existed on the commercial side,” continued Gaulthier, who made no secret of the fact that the resulting findings were sent directly to the US command in Europe ( Eucom) passed on to Nato and Ukraine.

Unprecedented use of commercial satellite imagery

What’s more, the advancement and early commissioning of private radar satellites (SAR), which enable observation even through dense cloud cover, has enabled the Ukrainian army to recognize where it needs to strengthen its defenses, Gauthier continued. The commercial satellite operators were even “connected directly to the analysts in the Ukraine” via a web portal. The extent to which the commercial satellite data is being used is “unprecedented in this deployment,” Gauthier said.

However, the provision of war-relevant data from commercial sources to another state is not unproblematic. A Senate hearing recently dealt with this issue, in which the commander of the US Space Command, James Dickinson, was unable to give a comprehensive answer. The disruption of satellite data – corresponding attempts are said to have already been made – is not generally understood as the use of force, Jack Beard, an expert on space law, told the newspaper. But what if a satellite is actually attacked directly? “It is unclear whether an attack on a commercial satellite justifies an armed attack,” Beard said. Such questions are unresolved, “but are becoming more and more relevant”.

Commercial satellites as legitimate war targets?

Possibly in this war. According to Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation think tank, a commercial satellite whose data could influence the course of a war could be considered a legitimate military target.

A test of Russian anti-satellite weapons in November last year therefore appears in a different light. At that time, the destruction of a disused satellite caused incomprehension among international astronauts, since the debris produced threatened to endanger the International Space Station ISS. One thing is clear from the incident: Russia has the means to destroy satellites in orbit and could end the flow of photos and data that can help solve war crimes.

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