Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on his neighbor has coincided with a jump in the number and sophistication of commercial surveillance satellites, which now have hundreds in orbit. Company officials say they are streaming the data to the US and allied governments, sometimes directly to assist Kyiv authorities in dispersing Russia’s invading forces, as well as helping humanitarian groups map the chaos and kill civilians. to help remove.
Even before Russian troops entered Ukraine, satellites detailed the Kremlin’s plans. When Mr. Putin said his troops were pulling back at the border at large, satellites showed the opposite, and Russia had built a bridge from Belarus for tanks to cross a river in Ukraine. “Nobody knew how to look at that area,” said Planet Labs PBC co-founder and chief executive Will Marshall.
The imagery provider, which is working with the Pentagon and others, was able to find the bridge as its fleet of about 200 satellites scans the entire Ukraine once a day, Mr Marshall said. The company’s satellites have a resolution of about 9 feet, a measure of the level of detail of the image by the sensor, and can see changes on the ground.
It’s not just optical imagery being assembled. Industry officials said some satellites could see through the clouds and track Russian military movements at night. Still others scrutinize electronic signals that could be used to track Russian forces. Data from commercial spacecraft may not be as high-quality as the latest US spy satellites can cut, but they can be shared easily without the weight of security restrictions.
The data from these commercial spy satellites is now an integral, if often unofficial, part of the conflict, providing Ukraine with valuable intelligence that it can use to fight the Russian military, but also by uncovering civilian destruction and potential war crimes. also in shaping public opinion.
Senior US national security officials and industry executives say affordable rental satellites have changed warfare, making it harder for Russia to hide or isolate its military actions. Since so much information is already public, it has also made it easier for US intelligence agencies to make public and share some of their own secrets.
Hawkeye 360 CEO John Serafini, referring to the US military’s use of satellite navigation for precision operations in the 1991 conflict, said, “The commercial geospatial data for the war in Ukraine 30 years ago was GPS for Desert Storms.” Hawkeye 360, one of several satellite startups still in its first decade, is a constellation collecting radio-frequency signals from space.
Industry officials said the satellites have also been used to track refugee flows in Ukraine and find mass graves.
Spy satellites arrived in the early days of the space race. Months after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to transmit radio signals, in 1957, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved America’s plans to develop and launch spy satellites. The resolution of those early spacecraft images was about 25 feet.
In 1999, a four-decade government monopoly began to change with the launch of the Iconos satellite, a commercial Earth-imaging spacecraft that offered users resolutions up to about 3 feet.
According to industry executives, in the early years of commercial imaging satellites, customers were still largely governments. As more Earth-imaging satellites were launched and users became more familiar with what it could provide, and the spacecraft showed more detail, said Stephen Wood, a senior director at Maxar Technologies Ltd. There are four operational satellites.
Maxar, which has been a major provider of Ukraine imagery to media – including The Wall Street Journal – during the Russian invasion, uses cameras that take pictures with resolutions of up to 12 inches. Mr Wood said the company could also retrofit onboard cameras to collect imagery of what is happening on the ground over a larger area, including the border areas with Ukraine.
While government intelligence agencies once viewed commercial spy satellites with suspicion, they are now keen customers.
US government spy satellites cost billions of dollars and could take years to build and deploy. Commercial spy satellites are relatively cheap and can fill gaps.
The US government is encouraging private companies to share their stake, Navy Vice Admiral Robert Sharp, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which collects, analyzes and distributes data from US spy satellites, said in an interview.
At GEOINT, an annual space-intelligence conference, he said, “the business industry has been an important aspect of our government, being able to make the right information, the right classification at the right time.”
Industry officials said Ukraine, with its notoriously difficult weather, is an ideal proving ground for a space technology that has only recently been commercialized: synthetic aperture radar, which can see through clouds, fog and snow. .
Space technology company MDA Ltd said it has a contract with a commercial US space partner. The imagery it collects is merged and analyzed with the imagery collected by other companies. Those intelligence reports are then shared with the government of Ukraine.
Mike Greenlee, MDA’s chief executive, said, “Ukraine is a difficult place and there is a lot of cloud cover and night operations. The company has a radar satellite and the Canadian government is a group of three. They can find out where the vehicles are. Where have they gone, even in inclement weather and spot tanks hidden under trees, he said.
The company can image Ukraine daily, Mr Greenlee said, and the images can be ready to view in less than 15 minutes in some cases.
Adam Sharp stated that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—perhaps best known to the public for building a model of Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad complex in Pakistan based on space imagery—dedicated its resources to Ukraine. has increased. Private firms say they have done the same.
Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky Technology Inc., said that days after Russia’s February 24 invasion, the company decided to change the planned orbit of the two imaging satellites, which would be launched on April 2, so that they could give more space to Ukraine. can cross the bar. For this it is necessary to obtain the approval of the US government to modify the rocket launch and modify its launch license, he said.
The company said that Ukraine’s imagery was delivered to customers within 24 hours of launch.
The Hawkeye 360 deploys a different set of sensors. Its satellites collect and pinpoint radio-frequency signals from space – anything from illegal fishing vessels to emergency beacons. Mr Serafini said in an interview that as Mr Putin’s forces moved north to Ukraine and then pulled back after failing to take Kyiv, Hawkeye’s spacecraft tracked the jamming of GPS signals by the Russian military. .
Commercial operations are not without risk, however, and several companies declined to be specific about how they are aiding Ukraine in its effort to stop a Moscow attack. One executive said he feared his firm could become the target of a Russian cyberattack.
Adam Sharp said his agency saw no disruption to the US government or commercial imaging satellites.
The Pentagon declined to provide details about “commercial satellite imagery services” that were included as part of a package of security aid to Ukraine announced on April 14.
However, some companies are openly promoting what they are doing for Ukraine.
An Earth observation company started in Argentina, Satelogic, is providing space imagery directly to the Ukrainian government, as well as providing free data to humanitarian groups such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, said Thomas Vanmaatre, vice president of global business development. . “If you’re helping the cause, we send you a login and credentials,” he said.
The company has partnered with the Halifax International Security Forum, a non-profit organization, to raise $10 million with Ukraine dedicated time to satellites passing through its territory, instead of relying, as it does now, What do the government and companies provide it. The forum says it has raised about $100,000 so far.
Marshal of Planet Labs said the impact of commercial imagery goes far beyond Ukraine: governments can no longer shy away from large-scale military activity without everyone knowing.
“We are moving towards a transparent and accountable era through these technologies,” he said.