Chinese commercial IMINT satellites and their use in the Ukraine war
A new competitor to the US
For decades, the commercial imagery intelligence (IMINT) and remote sensing market was dominated by a handful of Western players, most prominently U.S. firms such as Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, along with Europe’s Airbus Defence and
Space.
That landscape is changing rapidly. In recent years, Chinese commercial space firms have begun to emerge as serious competitors in the IMINT and remote sensing sector.
Companies like Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. (operator of the Jilin-1 constellation), SpaceWill, 21AT and other private and state-linked ventures are fielding large fleets of Earth observation satellites, offering increasingly competitive image quality, revisit rates, and pricing. With constellations numbering in the dozens—and plans for hundreds—Chinese providers are pushing into both domestic and international markets.
Several factors are driving this shift. Advances in small satellite design, cheaper launch opportunities, and state support for China’s growing space economy have lowered barriers to entry. At the same time, demand for imagery is surging worldwide, fueled by emerging wars, applications in climate monitoring, urban planning, and commercial intelligence. For many developing nations and
private-sector clients, Chinese providers represent an attractive alternative to established Western suppliers.
This growing competition has strategic implications. While Western firms still lead in the highest-resolution imaging and analytic services, the rapid proliferation of capable Chinese systems is challenging their market share and reshaping the global balance of access to satellite-derived intelligence. While western constellations often have some spatial restriction (for example no images over Israel), Chinese services seem to come without any filter.
Chinese commercial reconnaissance in Ukraine
Much of this commercial Chinese satellite imagery (e.g. Beijing-3, image example below) can be bought by basically anyone. Reselling platforms like Apollo Mapping let us investigate where and when images were taken.
When we look at two different front segments in Ukraine from this year, it gives us the following image:
Donezkt/ Pokrovsk front
Kursk/ Sumy Front
Frontline shown in black (as of September 2025) and in Grey (As of January 2025)
Conclusions
The big question is, do Chinese commercial satellites make a strategic difference in the Ukraine war – for one or the other side. Well, that’s really hard to answer, but there are some hints that, at least to some degree, they do.
What we can definitely say is that these images are used by Russia, simply because Russia has access to these images and their national IMINT program is not the best – neither in quality nor quantity. They will definitely make use of these constellations and add them to their analysis. There are also some resellers of such constellations inside Russia: www.scanex.ru or www.terratech.ru.
The number of acquisitions at the Donezk front indicates an increased use by Russia to monitor the Ukrainian side. In the Kursk sector it seems to have been an increased interest from other customers, because it was mostly Russian territory being studied. Another explanation could be the Kursk offensive, where Ukraine still held large territories at the beginning of the year and Russia itself wanted to monitor the area, but that is just an assumption.
Chinese commercial satellites have become the main competitor to western companies. They are upscaling in quality and constellation size, and do not seem to have any restrictions, neither spatial nor on the customer-side. These constellations are definitely used by Russia in their war against Ukraine and are a big improvement in russias spaceborne IMINT capability.