The Russian drone pilots had bedded down for the night. Their white vehicle was parked in the driveway of a small house in occupied southern Ukraine.

About 30 miles away, two Ukrainian drone pilots had parked their truck in a tree line at the edge of a field and assembled a medium-size drone loaded with two bombs.

Their target? The sleeping Russian drone pilots.

The Ukrainian team had a powerful new battlefield tool that night: high-tech satellite imagery providing near real-time information on troop movements and locations.

A year ago, it could take days for satellite imagery to get to frontline troops, slowed by less sophisticated technology and layers of command structure. That made it difficult to hit targets that can move locations, like troops in a house, with long-range drone strikes. Now, a support team monitoring the house provided the drone operators a fresh satellite image showing the car in the driveway, an indication the Russians were there.

“The target is confirmed,” whispered one of the pilots, who identified himself with the call sign Tikhi, in accordance with Ukrainian military protocol.

The rapid delivery of high-quality satellite images to frontline troops is one the key battlefield advancements of the last year, enabling Ukraine to strike quickly against weapons depots, logistical hubs and troop encampments deep within territory held by Russia, and in Russia itself.

The truck used by Tikhi and his partner, known by the call sign Teplo, was in fact a mobile command center, loaded with computers that connect to commercial satellites.

In one new tool, developed by the Dutch company Bravo1Alpha, images are beamed to a device that looks like a hand-held video game console, from which pilots can search for targets, plot flight paths and even fire weapons from drones.

Frontline troops in some cases can control satellites themselves, quickly analyzing the images for targets, and then firing their weapons. Rapid satellite imagery also helps them verify which targets have been hit, and fire again if need be.

Troops still need approval from more senior commanders to hit targets, reducing the risk of error by less experienced pilots. But the process is now much more streamlined.

These advances have underpinned Ukraine’s efforts to isolate the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula. Recent satellite-aided strikes have destroyed ferry terminals that Russia needs to supply the peninsula, and the logistical routes needed to keep troops fighting in southern Ukraine armed and fed.

In June, soldiers from Ukraine’s 422nd Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment used satellite imagery to target and take out several installations in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region that Russia uses to jam Starlink signals, which many Ukrainian drones use for navigation. The regiment also recently took part in an operation to destroy several expensive Russian air defense systems in Crimea among other targets.

“This is incredibly helpful support.” said Maj. Mykola Kolesnyk, the commander of the regiment.

With the war in Ukraine largely mired in a bloody stalemate, progress on the battlefield increasingly comes down to a race for new technologies that can give one side an edge. Drones, whether in the air, on land or at sea, have emerged as the most effective way to kill or maim enemies.

But the technology is less efficient when it comes to finding them. Surveillance drones, known as I.S.R.s, can be shot down or their signals jammed. Their ranges are limited, as is the physical area they can cover.

Space offers the next frontier.

Ukrainians used satellite imagery, provided by allied governments and commercial enterprises, to aid their fight against Russia even before the invasion of 2022. But until recently it has been a scarce commodity. Only senior commanders were given access to use it in high-level strategic planning.

Even that access was limited and vulnerable to disruption. In March 2025, for example, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to stop sharing satellite imagery with Ukraine, though this was eventually restored.

In the last year or so, access to satellite imagery has expanded greatly, provided by the U.S. government and private companies. Vantor, a commercial company that has worked with Ukraine for years, recently launched six new satellites, bringing the total to 10. Its satellites can now cover up to 7 million square kilometers of the planet daily, enough to scan the Ukrainian battlefield many times over, said Will Cocos, the company’s chief transformation officer.

The satellites can provide images of the same area up to 15 times per day, helping soldiers look for subtle changes in the terrain that might indicate possible Russian targets.

More important for Ukraine’s progress on the front, Mr. Cocos said, was the expanded access to battlefield troops.

Images can be obtained in as little as 15 minutes, though more often it can take up to a few hours. This is still an enormous improvement over the recent past, when it would sometimes take days.

“We essentially hand the satellite over to them,” Mr. Cocos said. “They tell it what to shoot.”

The advent of drone warfare has changed the look of the battlefield since the beginning of this war. Gone are the large concentrations of armor, logistical hubs and groupings of soldiers that could easily be seen and targeted.

“In our regiment, we haven’t seen a tank in six months,” Major Kolesnyk said. “The ones they have are tucked away in shelters.”

Major Kolesnyk insisted on meeting in a tree line outside Zaporizhzhia, in southeastern Ukraine, rather than in a command post or the city itself, fearful of the drones circling overhead.

Commercial satellite companies maintain huge archives of images over time, allowing field commanders to study subtle changes in the environment — tracks in a field, fallen trees, newly cleared land — that might indicate a target being hidden.

“Overall, this feels like a revolution in military technology,” said Robert Tollast, a military expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.

In the tree line, the two Ukrainian drone operators monitoring the house with the Russians awaited confirmation of their target. The soldier known as Teplo pulled up video on his phone of a recent strike using satellite assistance. It showed a thicket of trees in the Kherson region with no discernible military targets. But after studying the satellite images over a period of weeks, soldiers discovered tracks leading into the trees that weren’t visible in earlier images. In another video, the same thicket had become a hellscape of burning vehicles.

“It’s an ideal operation,” Teplo said. “Actually, it’s frightening. Nothing can help you.”

At the edge of the field, it was eerily tranquil, with the sound of crickets only occasionally interrupted by explosive booms in the distance. But the pilots were tense and on alert for enemy drones. Odd sounds made them flinch. The pilot known as Tikhi had a bandaged hand after a recent run-in with a Russian FPV drone.

The first attempt to take out the house with the Russian pilots was interrupted by a Russian bombardment. Shahed drones and powerful glide bombs streaked through the sky. The electronic warfare equipment Ukraine was using to scramble the Russian weapons’ GPS signals also prevented the Ukrainian team from launching their weapon.

Several nights later, it was quieter, and the team could finally strike.

A satellite image generated after the attack showed the damage: two large holes through the roof of the house.