The Glass Battlefield: Commercial Imagery and the New Strategic Realities of the Iran-Israel Conflict

The brief, high-intensity conflict between Iran and Israel in June 2025 was not defined solely by the munitions expended or the territory contested, but by the terabytes of data that rendered the battlefield transparent to a global audience. The engagement served as a stark demonstration that the proliferation of high-resolution, high-cadence commercial satellite imagery has created a “glass battlefield,” fundamentally and irrevocably altering the strategic information environment. This capability, once the exclusive domain of superpowers, is now a foundational element of modern warfare, accessible to any actor with a budget.

The Iran-Israel conflict serves as a critical case study, illustrating how state actors, non-state groups, media organizations, and the public now possess access to near-real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data. This “democratization of intelligence” erodes traditional state monopolies on high-grade intelligence and complicates every phase of military operations, from planning and strategic surprise to battle damage assessment (BDA) and narrative control.¹ The ability to see the battlefield is no longer synonymous with the ability to control it; rather, the power now lies in the ability to analyze, contextualize, and weaponize that vision faster and more effectively than the adversary.

This briefing will first dissect the technological capabilities of the commercial geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) ecosystem that shaped the information environment of the 2025 conflict. Second, it will analyze the critical gap between raw imagery and value-added intelligence, showcasing how different actors exploited the same data to construct dueling narratives. Third, it will examine the deep, symbiotic integration of these commercial systems into U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) operations, highlighting both the strategic advantages and the inherent vulnerabilities. Finally, it will synthesize these findings into a set of strategic imperatives for military and intelligence communities who must now operate, fight, and win on this new glass battlefield.

The commercial remote sensing industry has matured from a niche market into a global, multi-billion-dollar enterprise that provides ISR capabilities on par with, and in some cases exceeding, those of state-owned systems.² The June 2025 conflict underscored that this commercialized battlespace is not a future concept but a present reality.³ Understanding the key providers and their technologies is essential to grasping the new strategic landscape.

Two American companies, Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, dominate the commercial GEOINT landscape, offering complementary capabilities that together create a near-persistent, all-seeing eye over the modern battlefield.

Maxar Technologies stands as a cornerstone provider for the U.S. government, supplying an estimated 90 percent of the foundational GEOINT used for national security.⁴ Its constellation of satellites, including the WorldView series, delivers high-resolution electro-optical (EO) imagery, capable of resolving objects on the ground with remarkable clarity.⁵ This makes Maxar’s products ideal for detailed “close look” analysis of specific sites, such as identifying individual pieces of military hardware, assessing precise structural damage to infrastructure, or monitoring activity at a single facility.⁶ During the June 2025 conflict, news outlets like Reuters published high-resolution Maxar imagery of Iranian bases, providing the public with a clear, detailed view of the targets.⁷ Beyond new collections, Maxar’s massive 125-petabyte historical archive is a critical resource for both government and media, enabling historical analysis and providing “ground truth” in areas inaccessible to journalists.⁸

Planet Labs operates on a different but equally powerful model focused on unprecedented revisit rates, or cadence. Its primary constellation, PlanetScope, consists of hundreds of small satellites that image the entire Earth’s landmass every single day, albeit at a medium resolution of approximately 3.7 meters.⁹ This daily global scan is revolutionary for monitoring broad areas and detecting change over time. It allows analysts to spot anomalies, track large-scale logistical movements, and identify military buildups.¹⁰ This wide-area surveillance is augmented by Planet’s SkySat constellation, a fleet of high-resolution satellites that can be tasked to capture detailed 50-centimeter imagery and video of specific targets, offering multiple revisits per day.¹¹ This combination of broad, persistent coverage and high-resolution, on-demand tasking is a potent tool. In the opening days of the 2025 conflict, the Associated Press used Planet imagery to provide rapid “before-and-after” shots of strikes on Iranian missile bases near Tabriz and Kermanshah, demonstrating the timeliness and utility of Planet’s architecture for rapid BDA.¹²

The capabilities of these commercial systems extend far beyond what is visible to the human eye. Providers offer multi-spectral imagery, which captures light in different bands like Near-Infrared (NIR), useful for assessing vegetation health, detecting camouflage, and conducting environmental analysis.¹³ Furthermore, the increasing availability of commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) provides a true all-weather, day-night capability. SAR can penetrate clouds, smoke, and darkness, making it nearly impossible for an adversary to hide activity by waiting for bad weather or nightfall.¹⁴ The proliferation of these diverse sensor types means there are few, if any, conditions under which a target area can remain unobserved for a prolonged period.

Crucially, this advanced ISR capability operates on a commercial, fee-for-service basis. Imagery is a commodity, sold via large-scale government contracts, corporate subscriptions, and on-demand tasking to a diverse customer base that includes governments, media outlets, financial institutions, agricultural companies, and non-governmental organizations.¹⁵ This commercial model has profound strategic implications. It means that adversaries like Iran can, and do, seek to acquire satellite services to monitor their own adversaries, including Israel and U.S. forces in the region.¹⁶ The battlefield is no longer just observed by superpowers; it is observed by anyone with a credit card and an internet connection.

This new reality effectively ends the era of strategic surprise for large-scale conventional operations. The combination of Planet’s daily global scan and Maxar’s high-resolution tasking drastically shortens the timeline for detecting major military preparations. Any nation planning a significant offensive must now assume that the massing of troops, equipment, and logistical support will be detected and likely publicized by commercial satellites well before H-hour. This was demonstrated conclusively in the months leading up to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, where commercial imagery from Maxar and others provided the first public, verifiable evidence of the massive Russian military buildup, robbing the Kremlin of any element of strategic surprise.¹⁷ This forces a shift in military planning away from surprise attack and toward strategic signaling, deterrence, and shaping the information environment long before the first shot is fired.

Furthermore, this “democratization of ISR” creates a condition of symmetric vulnerability. While the United States and its allies leverage commercial GEOINT as a powerful force multiplier, the open accessibility of this technology means that adversaries and non-state actors can use it for their own targeting and intelligence gathering. U.S. military officers have acknowledged that commercial satellites could provide as much as 90 percent of the intelligence they need.¹⁸ It follows that an Israeli force concentration in the Golan Heights, a U.S. logistics hub in the Persian Gulf, or a partner nation’s airbase are just as visible to an Iranian analyst with a Planet or Maxar subscription as Iranian facilities are to the West. This partially negates the traditional ISR advantage held by technologically superior nations, at least within the unclassified, commercial domain, and forces all actors to operate with the assumption that they are constantly being watched.

The June 2025 conflict demonstrated a fundamental truth of the modern information environment: raw imagery is not intelligence.¹⁹ Intelligence is the product of rigorous analysis, contextualization, and validation. While the global media landscape was saturated with satellite photos of the conflict, the meaning of those photos was fiercely contested. This created a chasm between what the public saw and what analysts understood, turning commercial imagery into a key battleground for narrative control.

The GEOINT products that emerged during the conflict varied dramatically in quality and analytical rigor, highlighting the difference between simply showing an image and producing actionable intelligence.²⁰

At the most basic level were the raw, uncontextualized images published by major news agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters. These “before-and-after” shots, while visually compelling and effective at communicating that an event had occurred, lacked essential geospatial elements. They were often published without scale bars, north arrows, geographic coordinates, or detailed annotations.²¹ This type of product informs the public but provides little analytical depth, leaving interpretation entirely to the viewer and making it susceptible to manipulation and misinterpretation.

A significant step up in quality was provided by think tanks like the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Their products, often using Planet Labs imagery, went beyond the raw image. They included critical context such as locator maps to orient the viewer, date stamps for both the imagery and the event, and clear annotations identifying the location and offering a preliminary assessment of the damage.²² This transforms a picture into a piece of analysis. It guides the viewer’s understanding and presents a clear, albeit focused, argument. ISW’s use of satellite imagery to analyze damage to Houthi-controlled ports in Yemen provides another real-world example of this methodology, where imagery is used to support a specific, verifiable analytical claim.²³

At the highest end of the open-source spectrum are expert-grade GEOINT products, such as the example from the analytical firm Contested Ground.²⁴ This level of production represents a professional standard of intelligence reporting. It includes a formal template, report numbers, precise geographic coordinates, scale bars, and detailed call-out boxes that enlarge and annotate specific systems of military significance, such as radar sites, air defense missile launchers, and perimeter security. This level of detail communicates not just what happened, but how and why it is significant from a military perspective. It is designed for a specialist audience and demonstrates a deep, granular understanding of the target and the military operation in question.

• Low Resolution Raw Imagery:

• High Resolution Raw Imagery:

• Annotated Damage Assessment Image:

• Detailed Military Site Analysis

The battle over the meaning of imagery is a subset of the larger information war. State and non-state actors weaponize open-source intelligence (OSINT), including GEOINT, to build and sustain narratives that support their strategic objectives.²⁵ Narratives are used to frame information, anchor perceptions in the minds of an audience, and exploit cognitive biases like confirmation bias.²⁶ The release of an un-annotated image of a damaged building can be framed by Iran as a barbaric Israeli attack on civilian infrastructure, while Israel frames it as a successful precision strike against a hidden military facility. The image itself, devoid of expert context, can be used as “proof” for both narratives, resonating with audiences predisposed to believe one side over the other.

This dynamic creates a significant “credibility gap” for governments. Senior U.S. and allied leaders are briefed with highly classified, multi-source intelligence products that provide a far more complete picture of an event than what is commercially available.²⁷ This classified picture may incorporate signals intelligence (SIGINT) confirming a facility was evacuated, or human intelligence (HUMINT) detailing the destruction of critical internal components not visible from space. However, this intelligence cannot be released. When an official statement, based on this classified knowledge, claims a target was “successfully neutralized,” it may appear to directly contradict the public visual evidence from a commercial satellite that shows the building is still standing. This forces governments into an impossible dilemma: stay silent and lose the information battle, or make a claim that appears unsubstantiated to the public, thereby eroding trust and credibility.

Compounding this challenge is the rise of the “GEOINT influencer.” The widespread availability of data and powerful analytical tools has empowered a new class of non-state actors—think tanks like ISW, investigative journalist collectives like Bellingcat, and even dedicated individuals—to produce high-quality, influential open-source intelligence.²⁸ These groups often command high credibility with the media and the public due to their perceived independence and transparency.²⁹ Consequently, their analysis can shape the dominant international narrative of a conflict more effectively than official statements from the belligerents. This means that for state actors, monitoring, engaging with, and at times influencing these independent “GEOINT influencers” becomes a key strategic objective in modern information warfare.

The U.S. government is not a passive observer of the commercial GEOINT market; it is its primary driver and largest consumer. This deep, symbiotic relationship is a core component of U.S. national security strategy, providing critical, unclassified capabilities that complement, enhance, and in some cases enable traditional classified intelligence operations.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) serve as the central acquisition bodies for commercial satellite imagery on behalf of the entire Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.³⁰ These agencies maintain massive, multi-billion-dollar contracts with providers like Maxar and Planet to ensure prioritized access to their data streams.³¹ This imagery is not merely supplementary; it serves as “foundational GEOINT,” an unclassified, shareable layer of geospatial data upon which more sensitive, classified intelligence from national systems can be overlaid.³² Programs like Maxar’s Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (GEGD) provide on-demand, cloud-based access to the world’s highest-resolution commercial imagery for thousands of vetted U.S. government users, supporting mission-critical planning and operations around the globe.³³

The strategic value of this unclassified imagery is immense, particularly in two key areas: coalition warfare and public diplomacy.

The single most important advantage of commercial imagery is its shareability. Unlike highly classified imagery from national technical means (NTM), commercial products are inherently unclassified and can be shared rapidly and widely with allies and partners without compromising sensitive sources and methods.³⁴ This is a critical enabler for coalition operations, allowing disparate military forces from different nations to operate from a common, unclassified map and a shared understanding of the battlespace.

Second, commercial imagery provides a powerful tool for public diplomacy and strategic communication. The U.S. government can use commercially sourced images to expose adversary actions—such as treaty violations, human rights abuses, or preparations for an attack—without having to declassify information from its most sensitive and capable national systems.³⁵ This allows the government to “show, not just tell,” backing up diplomatic statements with verifiable visual evidence and shaping the international narrative.

Despite its clear importance, the DoD’s process for acquiring and integrating emerging commercial capabilities is often slow, bureaucratic, and cumbersome.³⁶ A 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlighted a lack of clear roles and responsibilities for commercial imagery acquisition across the DoD and IC. The report also noted that the department had not developed effective performance goals and measures to assess its progress toward the stated strategic goal of “maximizing” the use of commercial capabilities.³⁷ This institutional friction creates a significant risk that the U.S. could lose its technological advantage, as more agile competitors like China are rapidly expanding their own constellations of state-owned and commercial Earth observation systems.³⁸

The military can, however, adapt its own processes to better leverage this commercial firehose of data. One emerging concept is the use of commercial GEOINT as a “tripwire” for classified systems. National intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, such as spy satellites, are exquisitely capable but are also scarce, high-demand resources. Military analysts can monitor the constant, wide-area stream of unclassified data from providers like Planet to detect changes and anomalies across vast regions. Only then, once an area of interest is identified, do they need to dedicate the limited and highly valuable classified national assets to investigate the most pressing targets. The U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division experimented with this very concept, seeking to use commercial imagery to cue other sensors and drive targeting.³⁹ This creates a more efficient, tiered ISR strategy that uses cheap, plentiful commercial data as a screening tool, allowing multi-billion-dollar national systems to be reserved for the highest-priority missions.

This deep integration of private companies into the national security apparatus creates a complex new reality, blurring the lines between state and corporate power. When a commercial company like Maxar provides 90 percent of foundational GEOINT to the military and is the prime contractor for critical programs like the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain 3D mapping project, its assets become de facto critical national security infrastructure.⁴⁰ As former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper noted, adversaries are unlikely to discriminate between U.S. military satellites and commercial satellites providing services to the U.S. government in the event of a conflict.⁴¹ This blurs the line between a private company and an arm of the state, with profound implications for international law, corporate risk management, and the rules of engagement in a future space conflict. This dynamic is codified in U.S. policy through the concept of “shutter control,” which allows the Secretary of Commerce to require satellite licensees to limit data collection or distribution to protect national security, effectively demonstrating direct government control over a nominally “commercial” asset in wartime.⁴²

Surviving, let alone thriving, on the glass battlefield requires a fundamental shift in military and intelligence posture. It is no longer sufficient to simply acquire commercial imagery; organizations must adapt their operational doctrine, security procedures, and communication strategies to account for an environment of radical transparency. The lessons from the June 2025 Iran-Israel conflict give rise to several urgent strategic imperatives.

Military commands must abandon a reactive posture in the information domain and move to seize the narrative by default. The default assumption in any operation should be to release information to shape public perception, with withholding being the deliberate exception that requires justification, not the other way around.

Action: Commands must develop and resource rapid declassification and public release protocols for GEOINT products. This involves pre-authorizing the use of commercial imagery in public communications and embedding public affairs and strategic communication specialists directly within operations and intelligence cells.

Rationale: In a 24/7 information cycle, an information vacuum will be filled instantly by an adversary’s narrative or by public speculation. By quickly releasing well-annotated imagery of a successful strike or verifiable evidence of an adversary’s malign activity, a state can anchor the initial narrative, making it much more difficult for subsequent disinformation to gain traction.⁴³ This requires a cultural shift that sees information operations not as an afterthought, but as a core component of the operation itself.

Operational security (OPSEC) must evolve. The goal can no longer be to prevent observation, which is increasingly impossible, but to manage the consequences of constant observation.

Action: All tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) must be revised with the explicit assumption that any static position, logistics hub, command post, or force concentration will be imaged, identified, and potentially targeted within hours by commercial systems. Doctrine must prioritize dispersal, hardening, camouflage, concealment, and deception (CCD), and above all, rapid and continuous movement.

Rationale: The traditional concept of a “secure rear area” is obsolete on the glass battlefield. Adversaries can and will use commercially available imagery for their own targeting cycles.⁴⁴ Therefore, force survivability depends on making oneself a difficult, transient, and un-rewarding target, not an invisible one. This means minimizing detectable signatures, avoiding predictable patterns, and embracing mobility as a primary defensive measure.

The United States and its allies must urgently develop and operationalize a full spectrum of methods to deny, degrade, and deceive adversary use of commercial GEOINT.

Action: This requires investment in both passive and active measures. Passive measures include advanced, multi-spectral camouflage, concealment, and deception that is effective against a range of sensor types. Active measures represent a new and escalatory domain of warfare, which could range from cyber-attacks on satellite ground stations and data links to localized electronic warfare against satellites, and, as a final and extreme resort, kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities. This must be accompanied by robust legal and diplomatic efforts to establish norms and hold commercial providers accountable for the use of their services by malign actors.⁴⁵

Rationale: If an adversary’s kill chain relies on commercial imagery for targeting, then that imagery system—including the satellite, its ground station, and its data network—becomes a legitimate and high-value military target. The legal, diplomatic, and escalatory implications of striking a “commercial” satellite are immense and fraught with risk.⁴⁶ However, the strategic necessity to protect one’s own forces from attack may demand it. This is a dangerous new frontier of warfare that requires urgent doctrinal, ethical, and legal development.

The Department of Defense must reform its cumbersome acquisition processes to keep pace with the rapid innovation of the commercial sector.

Action: The DoD should immediately implement the GAO’s recommendations to clarify acquisition roles across the enterprise and establish clear performance metrics for commercial imagery integration.⁴⁷ Furthermore, the Department should move toward a more decentralized model, empowering tactical units—such as brigade combat teams or carrier strike groups—with the direct authority and budget to purchase commercial imagery and analytical services that meet their immediate operational needs.

Rationale: The current centralized, slow-moving acquisition model creates a critical bottleneck that prevents warfighters at the tactical edge from accessing timely, mission-relevant intelligence.⁴⁸ A more decentralized or “democratized” approach to acquisition would allow tactical commanders to leverage the speed, flexibility, and innovation of the commercial market, shortening the sensor-to-shooter timeline and gaining a critical decision advantage on the battlefield.⁴⁹ This requires a significant cultural shift away from top-down, centralized control and toward empowering the tactical edge with the resources and authority to win.

1. Democratization of Intelligence? - Lund University Publications, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9112758/file/9113292.pdf

2. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

3. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

4. About Us - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/about

5. Ibid.

6. High-resolution Satellite Imagery - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/products/satellite-imagery

7. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

8. About Us - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/about

9. Satellite Imagery Analytics | Planet - Planet Labs, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.planet.com/products/satellite-imagery-of-earth/

10. Earth Observation & AI Data for Government - Planet Labs, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.planet.com/industries/government/

11. Satellite Imagery Analytics | Planet - Planet Labs, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.planet.com/products/satellite-imagery-of-earth/

12. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

13. Satellite Imagery Analytics | Planet - Planet Labs, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.planet.com/products/satellite-imagery-of-earth/

14. High-resolution Satellite Imagery - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/products/satellite-imagery

15. Planet Labs | World Economic Forum, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.weforum.org/organizations/planet-labs/

16. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

17. Commercial remote sensing: The critical U.S. National Security Space imperative, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/commercial-remote-sensing-the-critical-u-s-national-security-space-imperative/

18. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

19. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Iran Update, July 10, 2025 | Institute for the Study of War, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-10-2025

24. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

25. The Synergy of OSINT and Narrative Intelligence - EdgeTheory, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://edgetheory.com/resources/osint-and-narrative-intelligence

26. Ibid.

27. Israel - Iran conflict June 2025 ISR and media reports[45].docx

28. The rise of open-source intelligence | European Journal of International Security | Cambridge Core, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-international-security/article/rise-of-opensource-intelligence/21122432399ECB8078BF0D89A76D0586

29. Democratization of Intelligence? - Lund University Publications, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9112758/file/9113292.pdf

30. National Security Space: Actions Needed to Better Use Commercial Satellite Imagery and Analytics - GAO, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-106106

31. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

32. Solutions for U.S. Government - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/who-we-serve/us-government

33. Ibid.

34. Commercial remote sensing: The critical U.S. National Security Space imperative, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/commercial-remote-sensing-the-critical-u-s-national-security-space-imperative/

35. Solutions for U.S. Government - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/who-we-serve/us-government

36. National Security Space: Actions Needed to Better Use Commercial Satellite Imagery and Analytics - GAO, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-106106

37. Ibid.

38. Commercial remote sensing: The critical U.S. National Security Space imperative, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/commercial-remote-sensing-the-critical-u-s-national-security-space-imperative/

39. Leveraging Imagery Collection At The Tactical Level - Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://mipb.ikn.army.mil/issues/jan-jun-2025/leveraging-imagery-collection/

40. About Us - Maxar Technologies, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://maxar.com/maxar-intelligence/about

41. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

42. Commercial Satellite Imagery Comes of Age - Issues in Science and Technology, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://issues.org/florini/

43. The Synergy of OSINT and Narrative Intelligence - EdgeTheory, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://edgetheory.com/resources/osint-and-narrative-intelligence

44. Are commercial satellites used for intelligence-gathering in attack planning targetable?, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2021/03/05/are-commercial-satellites-used-for-intelligence-gathering-in-attack-planning-targetable/

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. National Security Space: Actions Needed to Better Use Commercial Satellite Imagery and Analytics - GAO, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-106106

48. Ibid.

49. Commercial remote sensing: The critical U.S. National Security Space imperative, accessed on July 11, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/commercial-remote-sensing-the-critical-u-s-national-security-space-imperative/