How Elon Musk’s Starlink is helping Ukraine in the fight against Russia
Starlink services are easily accessible even in combat environments, and are difficult to disrupt. Here is how.
Elon Musk on January 7 sparked yet another controversy after he described tanks as “deathtraps” and suggested that they shouldn’t be used in the Ukraine-Russia war.
In a tweet, the US billionaire said, “Tanks are a deathtrap now. With neither side having air superiority, you’re left with infantry & artillery – essentially WW1.”
Tanks are a deathtrap now. With neither side having air superiority, you’re left with infantry & artillery – essentially WW1.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2023
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His comments have come after the US provided tank-killing armoured vehicles as part of a multibillion-dollar package of military aid to Ukraine.
Before this too, Musk’s comments on the Russia-Ukraine war have attracted scrutiny. He was widely lauded at the start of the war for providing thousands of Starlink satellite internet devices, made by his company SpaceX, to Ukraine without any charge. However, he came in for criticism from Ukrainian officials and their allies when in October 2022, he suggested that Ukraine should make a peace deal with Russia and give up its claim on Crimea.
Regardless of his comments, however, Musk’s Starlink has become an essential part of Ukraine’s bid to fight the Russian invasion, serving as a “modicum of connectivity”, according to a recent report published by The Economist.
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Understanding how Starlink works
Starlink is a satellite constellation that comprises thousands of small satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX first began sending them into space in 2019 and currently, there are more than 3,000 of these satellites that send internet signals to designated ground receivers.
Unlike traditional internet providers, Starlink doesn’t require any ground infrastructure. One just needs to have a small satellite dish or a receiver device to access high-speed internet, much like satellite TV.
The company also has a mobile application for Android and iOS that uses augmented reality to help customers choose the ideal location and position for their receivers.
According to a report published by DW, SpaceX plans to “expand the network to up to 12,000 satellites, with a possible extension to 42,000”.
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Ubiquitous connectivity
Ukrainians and their armed forces first got access to Starlink when the country’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, two days after the invasion, wrote a tweet to Musk and asked for his help. A few hours later, the billionaire replied and informed the minister that the Starlink service was “now active in Ukraine”. He also added he would soon send the required hardware, including the dishes (designed in round or rectangular shapes) and their associated terminals, to the region.
As per The Economist, by May 2022, more than 150,000 people were using Starlink’s internet service. Not only this, it also emerged as a crucial communication tool for Ukraine’s armed forces because their own mediums of communication were compromised by Russian hackers, who had sought to “disable thousands of modems associated with the terminals which provide access” to their main satellite.
According to the report, what makes Starlink easily accessible even in the combat environment is the fact that the dishes and terminals used for providing the internet are portable and can be rigged to run off a car battery. In an area which has an unreliable supply of electricity, this is a huge advantage.
Apart from this, because Starlink consists of thousands of satellites that orbit around the Earth and aren’t too far from the ground, they are able to provide high bandwidth without many glitches.
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Role in warfare
As per The Economist report, Ukrainian soldiers are using Starlink internet to upload pictures of probable Russian targets. These images are subsequently evaluated by the commanders and they then decide whether to bomb the target and if so, from where. “It is much quicker than the means used to coordinate fire used up until now,” it mentions
Moreover, Starlink has made drone warfare much easier. The report suggested that Ukraine used the internet service to successfully attack Sevastopol — the Crimean headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The dependence of the Ukrainian armed forces on Starlink becomes more evident when one of the soldiers quoted in the report says, “Starlink is our oxygen”. He further adds if the service stops their “army would collapse into chaos”.
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Nuisance for Russians
Although the Russian forces are fully aware of Starlink’s capabilities, they haven’t been able to find a way to block its signals. The Economist report suggests that because the satellites of Starlink don’t fly very far from Earth’s surface, jamming their signals is a daunting task. Also, “the way that the dishes use sophisticated electronics to create narrow, tightly focused beams that follow satellites through the sky like invisible searchlights provides further resistance to interference.”
So far, even the cyber attacks by Russians have failed to effectively disrupt the services. Experts say that the advanced technology of Starlink’s satellites helps them to quickly recover from such attacks and resume their services.
According to the report, directly attacking these satellites isn’t an option for Moscow because it would mean “a severe escalation”. It adds, “Knocking out a single Starlink would achieve more or less nothing. If you want to damage the space-based bit of the system, you need to get rid of lots of them.”
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Monopoly of Musk
Despite Starlink’s manifold advantages and uses for Ukraine, analysts caution against Musk’s formidable dominance in the launch market and satellite-internet operations. They also point out that the billionaire “is an unaccountable single individual”, has other business interests that might influence his decisions, and is known for erratic behaviour.
Last year, when Musk proposed a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, the latter country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, took a potshot at him and said, “I think that either someone has influence over him, or he somehow draws conclusions on his own.”
Before this, Musk had also suggested his company SpaceX might not be able to fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine indefinitely. The comment came just a few months after the billionaire acquired Twitter for a whopping $44 billion.
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The issue of space crowding
Since its launch, Starlink has also been the subject of heated debates regarding space debris and satellite crowding.
According to the DW report, “the first Sputnik satellite was launched into space in 1957 and some 8,500 satellite launches have followed since.” Experts say that SpaceX’s ambitious plan of launching 42,000 more satellites in the next few years might lead to overcrowding in our orbit, which in turn would impede astronomers from making observations from Earth.
In February 2022, NASA also raised concerns about SpaceX’s plan and said it not only would increase congestion in space but also raise the potential for collisions, and interfere with the agency’s activities.
The DW report adds that the satellites of Starlink work only for five years and once they are dysfunctional, they remain in space and contribute to space debris.
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