Chinese satellite imagery analysis challenges US-Iran war claims
Researchers identify damage patterns that reveal vulnerabilities in fixed overseas military installations and operational shortcomings
Chinese scientists have used detailed satellite imagery analysis to examine damage to US military bases in the Middle East, uncovering discrepancies in both Washington and Tehran’s claims over the scale of the conflict.
“The observed scale of destruction indicates physical impacts that exceed the characterisations of ‘minimal damage’ or ‘successful defence’ commonly presented in US briefings,” the scientists wrote in a letter published in the peer-reviewed journal The Innovation on July 7.
“Concurrently, it also suggests that Iranian claims of ‘massive strikes’ may be overstated.”
On April 4, the US enacted “shutter control” measures on several commercial satellite providers, including California-based Planet Labs, suspending the distribution of high-resolution space imagery over conflict zones.
The decision limited the world’s ability to assess the impact of the conflict, with Washington and Tehran establishing conflicting versions that were difficult to verify with limited open-source intelligence.
“This move established a ‘data-denial environment’ in flashpoints, aiming to secure wartime information dominance,” the team from the CAS Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research wrote.
“In this data vacuum, [the] US emphasised effective defence, while Iran claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on critical hubs.”
Using 10-metre (32.8-foot) resolution data from the European Union’s Sentinel-2 satellites, the CAS team monitored American military bases across the Middle East before and after the air strikes from February 28 to April 9.
The team ran the data through advanced image processing and analysis techniques to reduce noise and identify “damage fingerprints” at this level of resolution.
The total identified damage amounted to about 217,900 square metres (2.35 million square feet), with the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait being the largest single target with 20 strike points.
They also analysed the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, where an attack destroyed hangars housing MQ-9 Reaper drones and U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
In Bahrain, the US Naval Forces Central Command and Fifth Fleet headquarters reportedly sustained structural damage to integrated building complexes.
Their analysis provided a “quantitative reference that diverges from the narratives of both sides”.
According to a social media post by the Chinese Society for Surveying and Mapping, the destruction of high-value targets exceeded the US’ claim of minimal losses, while the total scale did not reach Iran’s stated level of damage.
The strikes varied widely in scale, ranging from localised damage to widespread destruction.
In addition, the strikes were executed at distances ranging from about 78-644km (48-400 miles), with large-area strikes occurring at both short and long distances.
The analysis of the strikes showed there was a “two-wave collapse” in regional air-defence resilience.
In the initial attacks, single-day destruction totalled 58,600 square metres, followed by about two weeks of low-intensity confrontation.
This was followed by a second wave of attacks around March 15 that yielded another 50,000 square metres of damage.
This indicated that “air-defence resilience failed to recover in the short term”, with an average 15-day damage and repair cycle, the team wrote.
Iran’s ability to deploy strikes at the front lines may not be sufficient to support high-frequency strikes and requires a period of accumulation, according to the Chinese Society for Surveying and Mapping.
The association also said the US needed time to replenish its air-defence missiles and repair damaged radars.
“From the perspective of military geography, the empirical data demonstrates the escalating spatial vulnerability of fixed forward-deployed military bases,” the scientists said.
“The observed ‘two-wave’ concentrated damage footprint provides reasonable grounds to infer that these static hubs may be highly susceptible to defence saturation.”
Fixed forward bases are permanent or long-term overseas installations used for regional deterrence, reassuring allies, shortening response times and enabling logistics.
Such facilities are a cornerstone of America’s global defence posture, including in the Indo-Pacific. They are situated at important locations in South Korea, Japan, Australia and the Philippines.
While the sites provide deterrence and project power, they also expose US forces to air and missile strikes in the event of a conflict with a regional power such as China, according to a 2023 US congressional report on US Defence Infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific.
The Chinese scientists said the results “indicate that fixed bases and their anti-missile networks exhibit large-scale vulnerability for the first time under mixed drone and missile attacks, which may prompt a re-evaluation of future forward base defence and deployment strategies”.
Limitations to the study included the inability to detect small damage measuring only a few metres across owing to the spatial resolution of the imagery and the fact that the analysis might be a conservative estimate of the total physical impact, they added.