Conflict areas

Military satellites over the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On 21 October 2026, working military satellites of 18 countries were predicted to pass over the places in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where UCDP recorded fighting this year: 342 passes by 238 satellites. China's made the most: 184 passes by 128 satellites. A country's satellites over itself are not counted.

UCDP recorded 713 deaths (best estimate) in 147 events of state-based armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1 January 2026 and 2 September 2026.

Passes by country, 21 October 2026

predicted

How often each country's working military satellites pass over the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 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 the Democratic Republic of the Congo 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
DR Congo (Zaire): Government
Internationalised internal		5223 January 1964
this round since 8 August 2016
DR Congo (Zaire): Islamic State
Internationalised internal		15322 November 2017
this round since 8 December 2017
DR Congo (Zaire): Katanga
Internationalised internal		2427 October 1961
DR Congo (Zaire) - Rwanda12Not in the conflict list yet

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.