Pindi's Hallucinations Know No End: Does New Delhi Have Geospatial Shutter Control?

The enormous magnitude of India’s swift Operation Sindoor has made strategic analysts worldwide take notice of India’s rapid and precision strike capabilities. The magnitude is such that the advisors to Rawalpindi are in a tizzy, making self-defeating hoaxes that are, of course, not backed by evidence.

One such new hoax, originating from the advisor to the Strategic Plans Division, unintelligently states that the Government of India reigned not only over the Pakistani assets, but also elicited a stern ‘shutter control’ on Western commercial and non-commercial satellite imagery providers, ordering them not to share satellite pictures of its major air bases with its customers.

According to this advisor, Pakistan claims to have hit the Indian air bases and its air defences, but it cannot provide any physical evidence because of this shutter control by India.

During Operation Sindoor, Pakistan hallucinated it had successfully targeted the S-400 missile defence system at the Adampur Air Force Station. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the same Air Force Station on 13th May 2025 and, in a publicly released briefing to the nation and the international community, concomitantly showcased a fully operational S-400 system during his address to the confident Air Force personnel.

The false assertions made by the Pakistani Armed Forces were made during the ‘fog of war,’ but now, months after the operation, rather than letting go of the hallucination, their fake assertions are consequently damaging their international reputation further. The assertions appear to be targeted at the naive Pakistani elite, who remain loyal to their faltering armed forces, their state-sponsored terrorism, and diplomatic efforts.

Geospatial shutter control remains unfeasible for any nation, particularly in the current context where countries across different technopolitical blocs possess diverse geospatial capabilities, including high-resolution imaging, day-night imaging, cloud-penetrating, and ground-penetrating technologies.

It is challenging for any nation to prevent an adversary or a technologically capable partner from undertaking satellite surveillance of its strategic installations. 

Additionally, commercial satellite imagery providers, particularly those operating their own satellites, collaborate closely with the geospatial intelligence agencies of their respective countries and their data and analyses are integrated into the broader military and strategic intelligence gathering.

It is a well-established fact that allied countries often conduct surveillance on each other. Another verifiable but less frequently acknowledged fact is that geospatial imagery firms, especially those serving strategic clients—primarily within their own nation or among allies—have long maintained daily temporal images of strategic installations worldwide.

Modern imaging systems also facilitate damage assessment caused by explosions and projectile impacts, offering a variety of imagery signatures. The GEOINT collected during and immediately following conflicts provides substantial value to end-users.

Although the SPD’s claim is flattering, New Delhi shows no interest.

It is important to remember that a Pakistani intelligence network in the United States had requisitioned commercial geospatial images of Pahalgam for weeks prior to the heinous attack.

Additionally, India is not a member of any military alliance, nor does it participate in military coalitions like Pakistan, which engages in international coalitions solely to execute attacks against its own neighbours. Pakistan’s western neighbours would happily corroborate this viewpoint.

If any of the Indian strategic installations had been targeted, undoubtedly, the gathered GEOINT and its detailed analyses would have been employed to facilitate a coercive response against India, not just by Pakistan. In such a scenario, countries that have since signed or are awaiting the signing of numerous agreements, including the critically important Free Trade Agreements, would have extracted their ‘pound of flesh’ during negotiations.

Nothing in space escapes observation, and more critically, the intellect behind these observations does not squander time in exploiting the visualised events. India was prompt in providing imagery of all the targets it had struck. If any fragment of truth exists in SPD advisors' claim, Rawalpindi and its supporters would not have waited three months; assistance would have come their way, just the way they get bailed out regularly.