Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.
Planet wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using images for “Battle Damage Assessment” purposes.
Well that’s actually a really good point. We already know that Russia is sharing intel with them and even if China wasn’t doing the same, I’m sure they have no problem with “sharing” that intel at a price.
With this perspective I’m actually somewhat convinced that the move could have more to do with outside perception (be it for Americans or for the rest of the world).
Still, there’s no telling what the quality or timelines of the imagery they’re currently getting is like. The difference between having 10 second old images and 4 hour old images is huge, and we really don’t know what they’re getting from Russia. So with that in mind, they don’t need one more avenue to get that data, especially one that could be more immediate imagery.
Edit: As another user points out, these images aren’t being blacked out entirely, they’re just being held back on a 72 hour delay. This does indicate that the company isn’t trying to prevent their images from being seen, they will be seen. But they can’t be used for tactical advantage on the battlefield, 3 day old information is not very useful for that.
So, make of all that what you will.