Conflict areas

Military satellites over Iraq

On 21 October 2026, working military satellites of 18 countries were predicted to pass over the places in Iraq where UCDP recorded fighting this year: 492 passes by 337 satellites. China's made the most: 322 passes by 192 satellites. A country's satellites over itself are not counted.

UCDP recorded 222 deaths (best estimate) in 68 events of state-based armed conflict in Iraq between 8 January 2026 and 27 August 2026.

Passes by country, 21 October 2026

predicted

How often each country's working military satellites pass over the fighting in Iraq 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 Iraq 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
Iraq: Government
Internationalised internal		4214 July 1958
this round since 18 January 2004
Yemen (North Yemen): Government
Internationalised internal		2615 March 1948
this round since 16 July 2008
Iran: Kurdistan
Internal		2231 May 1946
Iran - Israel, United States of America13Not in the conflict list yet
Iran - Iraq
Interstate		711 April 1972
Syria: Islamic State
Internationalised internal		226 March 2013
this round since 25 July 2013

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.