Ukraine Discovers Starlink on Downed Russian Shahed Drone: Report
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
SELECT *
FROM receivers
WHERE receiver_location = Ukraine
AND receiver_speed > 100
AND receiver_registered_with_GRU = false
ORDER BY registration_date ASC;They can stop offering mobility or limit speeds away from the frontline.
* Russia is reportedly buying dishes (and the service attached to the dishes) in the Middle East.
* Ukraine has its own fleet of dishes (being paid for by the US, after Musk initially provided free service early in the war after a Ukrainian request), but also many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
US law prohibits Russia from using Starlink. The problem is, how to stop Russia from doing so? A simple location-based ban won't work, because the front line is constantly shifting. Whitelisting only Ukraine's own dishes to work within Ukrainian territory might work, but 1) what about dishes that get captured by Russia? 2) As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
Another way to think about this is that this demonstrates just how lifesaving for Ukraine Starlink has become. Ukraine could ask Starlink to disable all dishes within its territory. On the contrary, it has decided that the benefits of Starlink to Ukrainians outweighs Russians also benefiting from it.
> what about dishes that get captured by Russia?
- Ukraine can set validation rules, such as needing to be verified every 24 hrs. Make this possible to do on a per-key basis since some will be more at risk than others.
- Give an API to set certain rules to keys too. Like how fast it is able to move or based on any metadata.
- Only allow dishes that have been white listed via an official Ukrainian signing key access to working in that region of the world.
- Allow Ukraine to choose which licenses to approve and revoke because yeah, Russia, please take the dish so that Ukraine can get more information on Russian targets. If Russians steal a dish, the dish is known to be stolen, and the Ukrainians still have access to the dish's metadata, well you may not be able to see the drones but they are broadcasting their GPS coordinates to you...
> As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
I'm spitballing here, but my point is that these don't seem insurmountable problems. Like you say, there are costs and benefits, but a few of these suggestions would reduce costs while allowing Ukraine to keep benefits.
It might be more beneficial to silently spy on Russian terminals once they are found, rather than block them. In fact I wonder how much of that has been going on.
Let the Ukranian military decide which dishes are allowed to work in Ukraine and Russia. Surely they all have mac addresses and need a subscription/login to connect to the network, so surely it is manageable.
How well do the dishes triangulate? Can you follow their movement like cellphones, just less precise?
> Let the Ukranian military decide which dishes are allowed to work in Ukraine and Russia. Surely they all have mac addresses and need a subscription/login to connect to the network, so surely it is manageable.
No, Ukraine does not have the data needed to do this reliably. As I said,
>many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
Ukraine has decided that having those dishes continue to operate along with the odd Russian dish is better than mistakenly turning Ukrainian dishes paid by an American or French or Australian individual off.
This is not true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40250680 :
1 Musk never provided free service for Ukraine. All dishes have subscription. What Musk alluded to was "free upgrade" while demanding Ukrainians start paying for Mobile Priority plans.
2 "As of October 2022 there were 18k Starlink terminals in Ukraine. At the time State Department (USAID) paid for ~2K units, Poland paid for >12K units – over half of all terminals came from one relatively poor EU country.
December 2022 number rose to 22K. Apparently as of June 2023 there are >40K terminals in use, with USAID share rising to at least ~5K."
US paid for 1/8 of all terminals up to June 2023. I stopped tracking numbers last year.
1. isn't true.
There were several free dishes and dishes with free subscriptions. Every single round dish was delivered free. i.e every dish delivered in February 2022
Many people who received equipment after putting up a deposit who claimed they couldn't cover the cost of the equipment got it waived. If you stopped paying your bill it would still keep working for months. Some people even paid in full and asked for a waiver and refund.
The first set of USAID equipment was delivered in late March/Early April 2022 and SpaceX covered the subscription in full for every one of them.
In 2022, most dishes were bought by Poland. In 2024, most are privately purchased.
The gall to think a provider will charge a military user civilian prices for services is ridiculous especially with all the stuff that has gone down and the extra expectations.
You shouldn't be paying less than you pay OneWeb or SatCube period.
I won't be surprised if some people have attempted warranty replacements. I saw someone complaining they couldn't get their dish price waived in 2023.
https://www.barrons.com/news/poland-says-funding-20-000-star...
Multiple nations delivered them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
Russians are buying starlink equipment from the same place Ukrainians are; paying the same way, using the same way and in the same country.
It's not working in Russia, The company doesn't ship there, and doesn't accept payment from Russian banks or cards
Till today starlink doesn't work there in Crimea unless you use equipment bought by the Pentagon.
The Crimea sanctions aren't gone. And at that time the US refused to allow Ukraine use it's weapons in Crimea
And I feel I'm arguing with someone who doesn't know how Satellite Internet works, what spot beams are or how starlink dishes are bought in Ukraine.
I'll give you a clue. If you buy a dish at a supermarket in any country starlink operates, sign up for a roaming plan and enter Ukraine it will work. Just like any other global satellite Internet provider.
A stronger clue? No one involved has talked about it. And we don't even know if it's real.
Nothing from Ukraine, the State Department, the Pentagon, or SpaceX. Not one word.
This is an ongoing issue left over from stories earlier this year of Russia using Starlink. Something both Ukraine and the Pentagon are saying SpaceX is proactive in cooperation.
Unless you're asking SpaceX to turn off Starlink in Ukraine period.
One way to limit this issue right now is to cut the speed of mobility below 100 km/hr. I don't know if it can be done locally only.
Moreso this is a situation where data is being given to Ukraine and the Pentagon. Likely live (SpaceX sells monitoring dashboards to Enterprise customers) so they can work with that data
Even if it was SpaceX themselves, they need to be fined heavily, just as any of us would be. They are responsible by law (and good luck downvoting the Department of Commerce.)
Also, whoever took possession of the equipment at the receiving end needs to be added to the Denied Persons List ( https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/lists-of-p... ), so that they can no longer participate in international commerce with the US.
Safe to say a Starlink receiver isn't EAR99.
Have you ever sold a used car? That could be in Russia right now for all you know.
I suppose Ukraine will be happy to report stolen devices to Starlink.
2) As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
Controversial topic, but Ukraine can decide what to do with this devices.
>I suppose Ukraine will be happy to report stolen devices to Starlink.
If Russia completely wipes out a Ukrainian unit and seizes its dishes, who will report their being stolen? Especially if those dishes were donated and paid for by private individuals outside Ukraine in the first place, so do not appear on any Ukrainian government list?
> If Russia completely wipes out a Ukrainian unit and seizes its dishes, who will report their being stolen?
> Sir, we lost unit IDKWhatAPGPKeyis!
> Damn, another one. Remove their keys from the white list. Report to Admiral SoAndSo so he can provide the signing key to verify the removal.
If they're willing to be involved, I have a better idea: algorithmically determine when a receiver is being used on an airframe that takes off from Russian-controlled territory. Display their location on a map and provide that to the Ukrainian military. Give them the ability to shut down the data stream at will.
Better yet, degrade service to those devices in a randomized and targeted way that leads Russia to believe that the Ukrainian miltiary has developed a new EW system that interferes with Starlink, and are beginning to deploy it. Then selectively degrade service near specific areas of no strategic importance. Place decoy infrastructure in those areas - ammo dumps, air defense units, radar installations, etc.
You could even go so far as to design a fake antenna that won't actually do anything, manufacture them, and put them on a cheap chassis. Put those in areas where you're degrading service to lead them to believe they're the source of the interference.
Let Russia capture one or two that are built specifically to be plausible as a new type of EW military vehicle - but don't actually do anything. Then Russia will spend time, money, and hours trying to reverse-engineer something that never worked in the first place.
Ukraine has no way of knowing that a random dish that it is not paying for is being used by Russia, or by Ukrainian forces on the front lines after being donated by an Australian.
Providing such strike intelligence data might land Starlink even more squarely in the "military supplier"-basket - making it subject to stricter export regulations.
Personally, I think Russian nukes and their missiles are likely to be a Potempkin force, but I have no special intelligence to back that up, it's just based on what I see of Russian corruption and them accidentally sinking one of their own subs and separately setting their only aircraft carrier on fire about one year after their largest drydock sank and dropped a crane onto the deck. And that was before one of their missile silos exploded.
US nuclear forces have extremely strict procurement and change control processes. You don't just swap out an 8" floppy drive for a 3.5" drive in a missile silo; the change has to be considered, components procured, a migration strategy defined, and the change implemented.
... more importantly, if it's working without issue, why change it?
They're also not going to be using the latest-and-greatest tech at any point. Why should they? It's much better to use older tech that's well-proven, tested, and for which replacements don't rely on foreign industry.
8" floppy drives may be old, but they worked. We may not make them in the US, but the tech is so old that I'm sure it was cheap and easy to buy and store enough to last multiple human lifetimes.
Hell, the F-14's last flight with the Navy was in 2006. As far as I know, it still used one of the very first truly modern digital computers to control the wing sweep angle. It worked. Why change it, and risk it not working the same way?
This is different in a very important way.
One nuke in space would also be a continental scale EMP, which is why, despite my expectation that the Russian stuff is probably more paint than metal, it's still not a good idea to bet the farm (everyone's farm) on that.
[Elon Musk Told Pentagon He Spoke to Russia's Putin] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-21/musk-told...
[Putin called SpaceX founder Elon Musk an “outstanding person,” days after Musk acknowledged he blocked off internet access from his Starlink satellites during a Ukrainian raid last year.] https://thehill.com/policy/international/4200236-putin-calls...
Nevermind.
Thunderfoot would say "BUSTED!"
I find it very hard to argue Starlink is not a military technology! At least its satellites are low, so debris wont stay on orbit forever!
The Shahed-136 flies at low altitude and around 185 km/hour, well below the 1836 km/hour speed CoCom limit on GPS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
Who is to say it doesn't? At least some GPS receivers have those limitations set in firmware, and it's not too difficult to modify the firmware to change those values.
> I find it very hard to argue Starlink is not a military technology!
Sure it is. It's clearly "dual use", at least to some degree.
Not all dual use technologies are export controlled. For that matter, not all strictly military tech is export controlled. The legal/regulatory environment is designed to prevent potential adversaries from bridging the divide between their current capabilities and ours.
I could definitely see it being reasonable to place Starlink in that regulatory bucket, but it isn't necessarily a good idea. While it's convenient for long-distance communications, if there are alternatives that can serve the same use cases with similar investment (cost and complexity) then restricting it wouldn't really help anyone.
> At least its satellites are low, so debris wont stay on orbit forever!
I agree, but don't really see how it's relevant here.
as in impossible. Either you feed Starlink terminal firmware real coordinates or you lose downlink beam sync. Since you feed it real coordinates mothership knows where terminal is at all times = knows its speed, direction and where it came from.
What would happen if US went to war with Iran, and Iran would destroy Starlink constellation?
They already have rockets that reach such heights, and Kessler cascade effect would destroy all satellites on LEO!
Couple that with undersea optical cable disruption... We have global communication blackout!
I really feel we need stronger separation for military/non military infrastructure!
> They already have rockets that reach such heights, and Kessler cascade effect would destroy all satellites on LEO!
Then that would be a very convenient MAD threat for Iran, such that the US wouldn't do that.
But it would only be a thing they could reach for if they felt there was an existential threat: If Iran survived it would be on the hook for all the damage it caused in space due to the Space Liability Convention, which it has ratified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
And US army could not even conquer Afghanistan after 20 years. There is no way they would win.
I already told you why: They ratified a treaty saying so.
(Also: 'unprovoked'? The US isn't seeking reasons for that right now, even currently trying to lower tensions between them and Israel, and the two even had a brief period where they agreed to stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework)
Furthermore, the right to self defence doesn't give countries free reign to do anything, it has to be done with consideration to the harms done to non-combatants, both in the sense of "civilians" and "neutral countries".
> And US army could not even conquer Afghanistan after 20 years. There is no way they would win.
They conquored Afghanistan in a few months; they didn't want to run the place, so they tried to build a democracy. That didn't do what they were expecting, but it doesn't matter if the threat is "does XYZ have nukes and ICBMs?"
> consideration to the harms done to non-combatants, both in the sense of "civilians" and "neutral countries".
Knocking down Starlink is perfect version of no-harms strike. Nobody dies, only person negative affected is Musk and some techno bros.
With 45% probability, assuming he isn't assassinated.
The tie with Musk would make your hypothetical very convenient for Iran as an empty threat though, so there's that.
> Nobody dies
Loads of people die from communication failures.
More importantly, this would only even be a threat if it could actually cause a kessler cascade, because there's too many Starlink satellites to target directly even if you own SpaceX.
This matters because such a cascade will also mess up everything else in close orbits regardless of nationality.
It's like hypothesising someone might use CFCs as a chemical weapon: sure, if they want to make enemies with basically everyone all at the same time.
If the vast majority of highly pro Ukrainian and anti-Musk U.S. outlets are not running the story, perhaps it is not really confirmed.