September 7 CNN published Excerpts from a biography book about Elon Musk written by Walter Isaacson, which is not yet in stores. In the book, the author describes how the owner of SpaceX and Tesla turned off the Starlink satellite internet for Ukrainian marine drones approaching the Sevastopol Bay. Musk did this due to his reluctance to become a party to the dispute. “How am I connected to this war? Starlink wasn’t designed to fight wars. It was created so people can watch Netflix, relax, connect to the internet at school, and do nice peaceful things instead of drone strikes,” the entrepreneur said in his conversation with Isaacson.
After the connection was lost, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Fedorov asked Musk to reopen the terminals. Fedorov explained how powerful satellite-connected drones can be. “As a person who is changing the world with the help of technology, I want you to know this,” the Deputy Secretary wrote to Musk. According to Isaacson, SpaceX’s creator was impressed by the attack drones’ design but refused to turn down communications via Crimea because “Ukraine had gone too far.”
Following CNN’s broadcast, Musk began to be criticized both in the West and in Ukraine – he allegedly let down the Ukrainian military. In response to criticism, the entrepreneur told this story differently: the Starlink terminals transferred to Ukraine were not supposed to work in Crimea, and the meeting with the Ukrainian authorities took place after an urgent request for their inclusion there.
Why is a system originally designed to watch Netflix series so important to the Ukrainian military?
How does Starlink work?
Starlink is a global satellite Internet system from SpaceX. It differs from its predecessors in that its satellites are in low orbits at an altitude of approximately 550 kilometers. For comparison, satellites of the EchoStar provider are in geostationary orbits at an altitude of more than 35 thousand km. Due to the limited speed of light, the signal passing through such a satellite travels with a relatively large delay. It is invisible when exchanging text messages, but makes it impossible to play dynamic games over the Internet, for example. The latency when connecting via Starlink is comparable to wired networks.
The lower the satellite, the less coverage there is, so Starlink requires thousands of devices to function fully. There is currently a constellation of 4.5 thousand satellites in orbit, and SpaceX launches them in whole “clusters” of 40-60 pieces. The system allows you to watch HD video by providing high speed as well as low latency.
The Starlink user terminal looks like a thick tray or pizza box. It operates like a directional antenna, but the radiation pattern is created using a phased array antenna (PAA), not due to a concave shape like a typical “dish”. It allows you to electronically control the direction of the beam without physically rotating the device, as most modern military radars work.
From Netflix to the commander’s tablet
Initially, Starlink was created as a purely civilian system – Musk is absolutely right about this, no one said otherwise. But history knows many examples when civilian innovations became a powerful factor on the battlefield. For example, during the First World War, at the Battle of the Marne in 1914, the French transported six thousand soldiers in newfangled Parisian taxis, promptly closing the gap in their battle formations and preventing a breakthrough at the front. Thus the world’s first motorized infantry was born.
Starlink punched a hole in an extremely outdated communications system for Ukrainians. There can be no exact information on this subject, but thanks to numerous videos, it is known that Starlink terminals are deployed at the field headquarters of the Ukrainian army.
“Conventional communications are being destroyed along the line of contact between troops. Since Ukraine does not have enough satellite systems to provide sufficient traffic [между военными] The power created by Musk is needed. Without them, Ukrainians will have to revert to radios and wired systems, which slows things down significantly. It is known that the Ukrainian Armed Forces use interactive commander tablets that show intelligence data, where soldiers are and what events are taking place on the battlefield. Without Starlink, they will lose the opportunity to quickly and easily coordinate the actions of infantry, drones, artillery and other forces and vehicles,” Igor Bederov, head of the information and analytical research department of T.Hunter, told socialbites.ca.
An important feature of Starlink is considered to be its low vulnerability to interception and electronic jamming. Since data exchange occurs over the internet, it can be encrypted using any digital algorithm. Theoretically, the connection between the terminal and the satellite could be disrupted by radio interference, but this is prevented by the narrow directivity of the antenna. In order for the terminal to “hear” the interference, it must come from above, where the satellite is sending the signal.
NATO troops are independent of Starlink because they use TDL, JREAP, Link 16 and other short- and long-range digital communications systems. Their functions are similar to, and even significantly surpass, Ukrainian devices using the Internet and Starlink. But specialized military systems are so complex that Ukraine is unlikely to have them in the foreseeable future.
naval battle flow
On July 17, Ukrainian surface kamikaze drones hit the support of the Crimean Bridge and destroyed one of the automobile lines. In addition, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have repeatedly published videos allegedly taken from their cameras at the moment when such drones hit Russian ships or operate in the port area. Moreover, judging by what is happening in the video, the operators are actively controlling the drone like a boat in a computer game. Two-way communication with such a drone is most likely supported via the Starlink terminal; At least an antenna like this is clearly visible in the photos. Simply put, the boat runs a stream from a webcam, and the control system receives commands via the Internet. It’s unknown what Musk and the Ukrainian government ultimately agreed on, but without fast satellite internet, such drones would be nearly useless.
“There are various alternatives to operator control over the internet. For example, a drone can follow a route using NAVSTAR (GPS’s original name was socialbites.ca) or inertial navigation system. You can also correct the route using digital maps of the area (analyzing the surrounding view or the relief under the drone). These methods are quite complex and are only suitable for hitting large, stationary objects. This way it is impossible to hit something specific, such as a bridge support or especially a ship; this requires operator control via a video camera. Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok, former officer and military analyst of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said in a statement to socialbites.ca that the Ukrainian army does not have a good alternative to Starlink.
Some advanced weapons can locate targets on their own using pattern recognition. For example, the Storm Shadow cruise missile and, to a lesser extent, the Javelin anti-tank missile target the terminal area in this way. If Musk continues to prevent his system from being turned into a weapon, it is unlikely that the Ukrainian military-industrial complex will develop a similar replacement for Starlink in the near future.