A new “white list” from SpaceX is shutting off Russia’s illicit access to Starlink’s satellite internet across the front line.
At shortly before 3:00 a.m. Kyiv time on Feb. 5, Elon Musk retweeted a new guide from Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry for registering a Starlink terminal within UkraSubsequently, a series of alarmed Russian social media posts indicate that Starlink terminals were disconnecting en masse along the front.
Three Ukrainian commanders, speaking to the Kyiv Independent on the condition of anonymity, reported intercepting messages from Russian forces complaining about Starlink terminals failing in large numbers.
Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov, a longtime commentator on electronic warfare more recently appointed as advisor to Defense Minister Mykhaylo Fedorov, said the “enemy at the front doesn’t have a problem, the enemy has a catastrophe.”
Musk could have done that a long time ago. Instead he was blocking Ukraine’s.
Fuck that traitor.
He’s only doing it now because his name got out on the Epstein emails. The russians lost their kompromat on him.
Good observation. Now, on top of that he might have privileged information about the imminent fall of the ruSS economy … making him lose his horrible bet in favor the invaders.
It’s hard to believe that they don’t have much more than the public.
I’m surprised he doesn’t overtly support the Russians, like most of MAGA
It is my impression that deep strike drones previously flew pre-programmed (attempting to locate the target using satnav, with some fancy versions using ground scanning lidar or machine vision).
The problem of deep strike drones becoming remote-controlled seems recent, and Ukraine has been experiencing an increasing frequency of those since autumn. They’ve been attacking moving targets. One recently hit a locomotive moving on a railway, the other hit a bus full of miners.
I don’t know the background - was Starlink responsive or unresponsive, or did Ukrainians wait for a statistical curve of adoption to present itself and become certain, before asking Starlink to pull the rug.
What is clear that Ukraine has worked out a way of registering and whitelisting their own Starlink terminals, and hasn’t yet fully completed the process. Some Ukrainian units relying on small donors’ Starlink dishes are still working to get theirs whitelisted. However, this likely can’t be used to determine if Starlink was responsive to requests, as Ukraine would likely not start implementing a whitelist before getting a positive reply from Starlink - so the process becomes rushed for natural reasons.
Russians have been observed cursing Musk in colorful ways. In several places, offensive operations have temporarily stopped because units had become over-reliant on Starlink, and considered Musk “their own guy”.
Next step: war of the mesh networks.
Serhii Beskrestnov (radio amateur and now adviser to the Ukrainian defense ministry) has already pointed out that Russian drones are increasingly often providing connectivity to those that fly before them (expensive Chinese frequency hopping mesh radios have been recovered). While this dulls the edge of the swarm (the swarm has to be gradual, air defense will get time to reload) it requires Ukrainians to rework their jamming efforts and try to shoot down the relay nodes (which may be identifiable using signals intelligence). And of course, ideally, someone should talk to the Chinese companies, maybe offering to buy all the fancy mesh radios they make.
“Illicit” is definitely the wrong word.
