“Behind Pakistan’s Spy Satellites: A Structure Built For Speed And Precision In The Next War Against India”, Swarajya, June 12, 2026
“An investigation published by ThePrint this week confirmed what satellite trackers have been piecing together for months. Between January 2025 and June 2026, Pakistan placed six Earth-observation satellites in orbit, a constellation that now photographs Indian territory at least once every two days. For a space programme that managed nine launches in its first six decades, six launches in 16 months represents a discontinuity so sharp that a former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official compared it to a man with a walking disability waking up one morning and outrunning Usain Bolt.
The orbits in which these satellites have been placed give the game away. One satellite, PRSC-EO3, launched in April this year, abandoned the Sun-synchronous orbit that nearly all civilian imaging satellites use in favour of a 38-degree inclined orbit, sacrificing global coverage and consistent lighting to maximise revisit rates over a single latitude band running from 20 to 40 degrees north. That band covers Pakistan, north India and Kashmir.
Through the four days of fighting in May 2025, Pakistan plugged directly into the gap between Indian and Chinese space surveillance, a gap that runs decisively in China’s favour, drawing on Beijing’s intelligence picture to track Indian deployments it could never have seen on its own. Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, told a FICCI gathering in July 2025 that Pakistani officers in DGMO-level talks knew which Indian vectors were primed for action and asked for them to be pulled back. These were live inputs, he said plainly, that were coming from China…..”
Read full article at swarajyamag.com
