Ukraine has access to a trove of commercial satellite images, according to the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Kiev had access to a wide array of commercial satellite images for planning and executing its invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region, a senior US intelligence official has acknowledged. However, Washington continues to deny it had advance knowledge of the incursion.
Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), commented on Thursday regarding a report last week by The New York Times that said the US and Britain “have provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information” on Kursk Region. Kiev sent thousands of heavily-armed troops into the area earlier this month.
The Times report said that the intelligence was meant “not to help Ukraine push deeper into Russia, but to allow its commanders to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine” and was delivered after the start of the incursion.
Whitworth suggested that Times sources were referring to commercial satellite imagery, which the US has been giving Ukraine access to for years via Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD), a portal operated by the space firm Maxar.
”There were over 400,000 accounts in that particular portal. And so the availability of commercial imagery is sustained,” he said at a panel discussion hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
”If that is what they are using for purposes of this particular campaign, this limited campaign in Kursk, then I’ll defer to them to confirm that. But the availability is always there,” he added.
CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, who participated in the same event, said that based on conversations that his agency has with the Ukrainians “there seems to be intent on retaining some of that [captured Russian] territory for some period of time.”
Much of the panel’s discussion was about how the US government uses commercial solutions to bolster its espionage and military capabilities and intends to make more use of them in the future.
Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which its neighbor serves as a de facto private military company fighting for Washington’s interests. The level of engagement by the US and other members of NATO make them parties to the conflict according to Russian officials.
