Conflict areas

Military satellites over Afghanistan

On 21 October 2026, working military satellites of 18 countries were predicted to pass over the places in Afghanistan where UCDP recorded fighting this year: 515 passes by 351 satellites. China's made the most: 321 passes by 193 satellites. A country's satellites over itself are not counted.

UCDP recorded 645 deaths (best estimate) in 109 events of state-based armed conflict in Afghanistan between 1 January 2026 and 31 August 2026.

Passes by country, 21 October 2026

predicted

How often each country's working military satellites pass over the fighting in Afghanistan in the UTC day, for how many minutes in all, and by how many satellites. Arrows: the last 7 days against the 7 before, shown from 10% when new, moved or stopped satellites are behind it, or from 35% otherwise.

The fighting, from UCDP

1 January 2026 to 10 September 2026

The state-based armed conflicts UCDP recorded deaths in Afghanistan this year, with when each began from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (to 2025). Conflicts that began later aren't in that list yet.

ConflictDeathsSince
Afghanistan - Pakistan
Interstate		5013 January 2005
this round since 12 August 2024
Pakistan: Government
Internal		6711 February 1990
this round since 15 July 2007
Afghanistan: Islamic State
Internal		409 February 2015
this round since 3 March 2015
Afghanistan: Government
Internal		342 July 1975
this round since 27 April 1978

Other conflict areas

by passes

Passes and clusters: predicted by overhead24 for each minute of the day from Space-Track.org orbital elements, counting a pass when the point beneath a satellite is in or next to a 0.5° cell where UCDP recorded a death this year. Military satellites and their countries: GCAT by Jonathan McDowell (CC BY 4.0). Fighting: the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset (CC BY 4.0). Hegre, Håvard, Mihai Croicu, Kristine Eck and Stina Högbladh (2020), "Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset", Research & Politics. UCDP is part of and funded by DEMSCORE, national research infrastructure grant 2021-00162 from the Swedish Research Council. Conflict start dates: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset 26.1. Davies, Shawn, Therése Pettersson and Magnus Öberg (2026), "Organized violence 1989–2025, and violent political protests", Journal of Peace Research, doi:10.1093/jopres/xjag046; Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg and Håvard Strand (2002), "Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset", Journal of Peace Research 39(5). See military satellites by country and how overhead24 works.