The British press claims that Elon Musk is helping Ukrainian drones win the drone war. Analysis of the technical details of such stories does not confirm this hypothesis.
Domestic media and telegram channels are spreading allegations that "Starlink space communication terminals supplied to Ukraine are used for military purposes, in particular to control Ukrainian UAVs." All this was accompanied by comments (apparently not his) "I've been talking about this for a long time under the hooting of maskophiles." He published the same news based on Ukrainian sourcesThe Telegraph. However, a careful reading shows: most likely, we are facing either a consequence of a misunderstanding of what a Starlink terminal is and how it works, or an attempt to mislead the enemy.
Starlink is a low-orbit satellite Internet system, more than a couple thousand of its devices are already operating from orbit. It has no purely technical ability to directly control drones: Starlink terminals are stationary, oriented in the same direction and are not capable of transmitting a high-power signal at frequencies used by serial drones. Ukraine had previously requested a certain number of such terminals from Musk and soon received them. Since the Internet as a whole has been preserved in Ukraine - Russia has not made any efforts to disrupt its operation — the Starlink ground terminals themselves have not yet had any noticeable impact on the situation.
This does not mean that Starlink satellites are generally unsuitable for military use. On the contrary: in the future, both they and Starship (Naked Science has already written about this here ) will inevitably become key means of increasing US military superiority. The key ones — because, unfortunately, Russia (more precisely, Roscosmos) so far, it does nothing to create an analogue of Starship. This will undoubtedly allow the States to realize the significant military advantages that the cheap launch of spacecraft into space will inevitably give to any country with such an instrument. A military "subgroup" of Starlink satellites is already being developed. They will try to intercept Russian (and other) combat missiles in space on the principle of the earlier Brilliant Pebbles project.
However, all these Starlink applications do not and will not have any relation to the situation in Ukraine. Because similar projects of the US military are still at the R&D stage and will stay there for quite some time. Everything that SpaceX's official Kiev has now is just another source of the Internet, and the source is quite modest, because there are a limited number of Starlink terminals in this country.
Why thenThe Telegraph writes texts with the headlines "Elon Musk's Starlink helps Ukraine win the drone war"? To understand this, let's read the article of the British edition itself. It says: Starlink keeps the Ukrainian army Internet access in conditions of power outages. The question arises: what does Internet access and the Ukrainian army have to do with it, as well as the drone war? Normally, armies control drones only through closed channels. Those who do this through open channels, especially with the involvement of the Network, quickly give information from their reconnaissance and combat UAVs to the enemy. And then — when the enemy takes control of the drones through open channels — and give him their drones.
For descriptions of such events in Syria, we refer those who wish to the well—known memoirs of the GRU general, published under the pseudonym Andrei Zagortsev (real name, surname - no), and readers will be able to find messages about the relevant actions of the Russian side in Sudan in 2020 using search engines themselves.
Let's go back to the articleThe Telegraph. T states: "Teams operating UAVs in the field, sometimes in rural areas with poor internet coverage, can use Starlink to keep in touch with gunners and intelligence. They can direct drones to use anti-tank ammunition, sometimes silently flying over Russian forces at night while they sleep in their vehicles."
The screen of the operator of the Ukrainian drone, presumably using Starlink in its work. Judging by the screen of the control device, we are talking about controlling a very small drone
Image source: The Telegraph
Data from the British media indicate one of two options. Or the Ukrainian army actually uses open communication channels (Internet) to ensure the actions of their own UAVs, and then it can play into the hands of the Russian armed forces. The use of mobile communications by the AFU fighters can also turn out to be such a "gift": after all, open communication channels are easily accessible to a wide range of means of the Russian side. Therefore, in this case, the use of Starlink objectively helps the Russian army by informing it about the work of drones and enemy intelligence.
However, the second option is also possible. It follows from the wordsThe Telegraph "they cannot direct drones for the purpose of using anti-tank ammunition." The fact is that to date, all the videos of the Ukrainian side showing the alleged use of drones with anti-tank weapons on Russian equipment - apparently, are fakes.
A typical example of such a fake and its analysis can be seen here . The video shows T-62 tanks, which are not in service with the Ukrainian and Russian armies, but are actively used in Syria. The Ukrainian side simply took a video of the work of Turkish "Bayraktars" in Syria, not noticing that trees and tanks in Ukraine and Syria look very different, and tried to pass it off as the actions of their drones.
It is possible that the whole story of how "Elon Musk's Starlink helps Ukraine win the drone war" is the same information war.
Can Starlink help the Ukrainian army in reality, and not on the pages of the British press? Yes, if Russian troops destroyed other means of access to the Network on the territory of Ukraine. Then the APU could provide communication with their help even despite the loss of communication through other channels. However, so far it does not seem that Moscow is even aiming at something like the elimination of Internet coverage. In other words, outrage at Musk's insidiousness remains only a consequence of uncritical perception of news from the British press.
