The richest businessman in the world is burdened by relations with Ukraine In terms of functionality, GLONASS equipment is not much inferior to a similar foreign one, but it is more energy-consuming and heavier.
Photo of the author The richest man on the planet, American entrepreneur Elon Musk, put forward the plan "Peace of Ukraine and Russia" (Ukraine – Russia Peace).
An important detail: the SpaceX company controlled by him has been providing the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for almost eight months secure space communication services, independently paying for the lion's share of them.
The main provisions of the peace plan are as follows. The neutral status of Ukraine. Recognition of the Crimean peninsula as Russian and providing it with fresh water from Ukraine. Repeated referendum under the supervision of the UN in the Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk regions about their state affiliation.
"The will of the people living in Donbass and Crimea should determine who they belong to – Russia or Ukraine. Russia will have to leave if the people want it," the author of the idea explains. And further argues: "Crimea has been Russian since 1783, before Khrushchev's mistake."
An attempt to return the peninsula by force will lead Moscow to the need to use weapons of mass destruction. "The probability of a nuclear war is growing rapidly," Musk sums up. "It would be great if one day humanity stops aiming nuclear weapons at itself, which will destroy almost all life on earth." In his opinion, never before in the last 60 years has the world been exposed to such a high risk of unleashing a nuclear war.
A native of the South African Republic, Musk has achieved a lot. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla; co-owner of a number of innovative companies.
His fortune is estimated at over $300 billion. Until recently, he did not get into politics, except for a few inconspicuous episodes. He allowed himself only "thoughts out loud", receiving criticism and recommendations in response to refrain from such statements in the future.
The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov considered the fact of the appearance of Musk's peace plan as "positive", since prominent people in the West are trying to think logically about ways to translate the conflict into a peaceful course.
But an unflattering and harsh assessment was made from Kiev. Some respondents even used profanity. Having insulted the American rich man, the former ambassador to Germany Andrei Melnik wrote: "The only consequence of Musk's peace plan is that now no Ukrainian will ever buy a fucking Tesla-junk." As you know, among Musk's companies there is a manufacturer of electric cars Tesla, and even the leaders of nationalist battalions, surrounded in Mariupol and surrendered there to Russian troops, are seen among the buyers.
The comment of the Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba was also sustained in a harsh tone: people who "offer Ukraine to give up its people and land" should stop using the word "peace" as a euphemism to allow Moscow to "kill and rape thousands more innocent Ukrainians and seize even more land." And the adviser to the Ukrainian president, Mikhail Podolyak, said that his boss, Vladimir Zelensky, has a "better plan": the seizure of Crimea by force and the disarmament of Russia with the deprivation of its status as a nuclear superpower.
It should be noted that Kiev politicians strongly disagree with the American businessman in assessing the capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian Army. Musk considers Kiev's military victory unlikely, and his opponents believe in the defeat of the enemy on the battlefield.
Restraining his emotions, Musk tried to explain to the representatives of official Kiev the obvious fact: most residents of the east and south of Ukraine prefer Russian citizenship.
To Vladimir Zelensky's clarifying question, which of the parties to the conflict is now supported by Musk, he replied with the following tirade. "I am still very supportive of Ukraine, but I am convinced that a massive escalation of the war will lead to great damage for Ukraine and, possibly, for the world." In his opinion, in the event of a "total war" and mobilization in Russia, Ukraine's victory will be unlikely. "An attempt to return Crimea will lead to numerous deaths, the risk of nuclear war is possible. It will be terrible for Ukraine and the world," he warned.
In response, another portion of rudeness and accusations in an amount sufficient to give the businessman a reason to stop sponsoring the Kiev regime. However, on October 15, Musk wrote on his Twitter account that he agreed to continue paying for traffic for the APU. "To hell with it... although Starlink is still losing money, and other companies are receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, we will just continue to finance the government of Ukraine for free," he said.
It is appropriate to go to the technical details here. SpaceX has developed the global Starlink satellite system in order to provide high-speed broadband Internet access to those users who need reliable and inexpensive communication in places where the services of other providers are unavailable or unreliable.
The program was launched seven years ago, three years later prototypes were tested, and a few months later the first series of 60 satellites was put into orbit. By the middle of the current decade, SpaceX plans to launch about 12 thousand satellites (only a fourth part has been launched so far), the project cost is estimated at $ 10 billion.
The mass of the satellite is a quarter ton. It has its own power plant for raising the orbit (a typical figure is 536-570 km) and performing various maneuvers, including de-orbiting after resource exhaustion. The onboard equipment includes four phased array antennas (headlights).
The launch into space is carried out by Falcon 9 heavy-class launch vehicles designed and manufactured by SpaceX. Since 2013, the Falcons have completed almost 180 launches. The rocket is capable of delivering 60 satellites with a total weight of 15.6 tons to low orbit at a time.
The end-user equipment is represented by a terminal with a diameter of 61 cm complete with headlights. A couple of years ago, their sales began at $ 499, and they asked for another $99 monthly for the provided package of communication services. By now, the price has increased to $ 1.5 thousand per station.
Customers from the USA and Canada were the first to get access to communication services. By the summer of 2022, the number of users of the system exceeded 400 thousand in 39 countries, most of them on a free basis, while debugging and troubleshooting are underway. In September, SpaceX published a list of countries that will not be granted access to Starlink services: Russia, Afghanistan, Belarus, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea and Syria.
Although the satellite grouping passes as a commercial one, it exists thanks to the support of the Pentagon. Thus, the military provides SpaceX with data on tracking space debris, without which it is difficult to ensure the safe execution of maneuvers to prevent collisions with satellites of other operators.
The Pentagon is exploring the possibility of using Starlink for its own purposes. A trial contract worth $28 million was signed at the end of 2018, tests were carried out on the C-12J military transport aircraft, AC-130 fire support troops and the KC-135 flying tanker.
A year and a half later, the Pentagon and SpaceX signed a three-year agreement to test Starlink as a data exchange system between ground forces units. In parallel, experiments are being conducted on the use of satellites as a navigation system instead of or as an addition to GPS – NAVSTAR.
This summer, the US Air Force gave SpaceX a head contract to provide services for the 86th Air Wing at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, promising to use it as the basis of a larger deal in the future.
A couple of days after the start of a special military operation by the Russian army, the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mikhail Fedorov, asked Musk to provide the country with space communications. The next day, Musk confirmed the operability of Starlink on Ukrainian territory. At the same time, he provided open access to all categories of users for the period of martial law.
Deliveries of user terminals began in March at the expense of the company's own funds. Having assessed the advantages of the system, in July, the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny asked Musk to add another 6,200 stations, and in the future to ensure the supply of 500 stations monthly.
A number of Western European organizations also contributed. To date, the provider has transferred about 20 thousand satellite stations to Ukraine. Of these, the American Agency for International Development paid for 5 thousand terminals. In total, up to 85% of all terminals were paid for by various sponsors, including from the UK and Poland. They also covered about 30% of the costs associated with the operation of the service on the territory of Ukraine.
Thanks to the secure Internet access provided by SpaceX, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to organize the management of its formations, units and divisions in the conditions of electronic warfare (EW) on the part of the enemy. And also use dedicated communication channels to guide unmanned aircraft.
The efforts of Russian specialists to suppress Starlink signals in the special operation zone using various electronic warfare (EW) equipment are noted. Elon Musk himself even boasted on March 25 this year that his system has so far withstood all hacking and jamming attempts.
CNN has learned about SpaceX's appeal to the Pentagon with a request to finance the Starlink network in Ukraine. The corresponding letter from the provider dated September 8 contains a request to allocate $120 million by the end of this year, and another $400 million next year.
The military expressed readiness to hold negotiations, as they consider it necessary to provide the AFU with a stable space connection. However, the Pentagon believes that similar services can be provided by other companies (Iridium, Globalstar, Thuraya, Inmarsat, etc.). Musk's main argument in his favor is that his system remains the only communication system that is actually involved at the front, while "everyone else is dead."
"Starlink is the main communication system of the Ukrainian army. Internet fiber, telephone lines, towers and other means of space communication were destroyed," he claims.
At the same time, Musk made it clear that SpaceX is burdened by the burden of financing Starlink services from its own funds. Those have already spent $ 80 million, and by the end of the year the costs will exceed $ 100 million. "We are not able to continue providing Starlink terminals to Ukraine or pay for the operation of existing terminals for an indefinite time," the businessman admitted.
"SpaceX is not asking for past expenses to be reimbursed, but it also cannot finance the existing system for some time and send several thousand more terminals that use 100 times more data than ordinary households. This is unwise," Musk wrote.
How reliably does Starlink work over Ukraine? The Financial Times newspaper, citing Ukrainian officials, reported that the system sometimes malfunctions in the special operation zone. According to the British edition, communication losses were recorded in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkiv regions. Technical failures cause panic among the Ukrainian military. Some are in a hurry to lay the blame on the provider that he allegedly began to limit bandwidth in order to encourage users and their sponsors to pay for the communication services provided. Musk himself decided not to comment on the news about technical failures, citing the confidential nature of such information.
When he was the head of the state corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin publicly warned Musk that he "would have to answer in an adult way" for supplying the AFU with communications equipment.
At a regular briefing of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in early October, the official representative of the ministry said that the Russian Aerospace Forces "conducted experiments in orbits with spacecraft of foreign states."
Soon, Elon Musk proposed his peace plan, and also expressed doubt about the possibility of maintaining a satellite communication system in Ukraine in the absence of payment for relevant services by users or their sponsors. Some observers have suggested that the costs of the operator company have increased due to the need to refine the software and terminals so as to maintain the operability of the system in conditions of artificial interference.
Closer to the middle of October, Musk spoke more definitely: Russia is trying to "kill" Starlink in Ukraine. In order for the system to continue to work, additional funds and resources are needed. "Even in this case, Starlink may still die."
Vyacheslav IvanovVyacheslav Viktorovich Ivanov is a military expert and historian.
