Shortly before Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s northern border this month, members of Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade lost a vital resource. The Starlink satellite internet service, which soldiers use to communicate, gather intelligence and carry out drone strikes, was severely slowed.
Starlink is operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and has been crucial to the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war with Russia. Without full service, Ukrainian soldiers said they could not quickly communicate and share information about the surprise attack and resorted to sending text messages. According to Ukrainian soldiers, officials and electronic warfare experts, their experience was repeated on the new northern front.
The core of the failures: Russia’s increasing interference.
As Russian troops advanced this month near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, they used more powerful electronic weapons and more sophisticated tools to disrupt Starlink service, Ukrainian officials said. The advances pose a major threat to Ukraine, which has often managed to outmaneuver the Russian military using frontline connectivity and other technology but has found itself on the defensive against renewed Russian advances.
The new outages appeared to be the first time the Russians had caused widespread disruption to Starlink. If they continue to succeed, it could mark a tactical shift in the conflict and highlight Ukraine’s vulnerability and dependence on the services of Mr. Musk’s company. As the United States and other governments work with SpaceX, the disruptions raise broader questions about Starlink’s reliability against a technologically sophisticated adversary.
Starlink works by transmitting an internet connection from satellites orbiting the Earth. The signals are received at the bottom of pizza box-sized terminal dishes, which then distribute the connection like a Wi-Fi router to nearby laptops, phones and other devices. Starlink has been providing Ukraine with vital internet services since 2022. Soldiers rely on them to control internet-connected drones, which are used for surveillance and as weapons, among other things.
In an interview this week, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, said Russia’s recent attacks against Starlink appeared to use new and more advanced technologies. The service has performed remarkably well to date against interference on battlefields, where electronic warfare, radio interference and other communications disruptions have been widespread.
But the Russians are now “testing various mechanisms to disrupt the quality of Starlink connections because they are so important to us,” Mr. Fedorov said, without giving details of their “powerful” electronic weapons systems. Ukraine is constantly in contact with SpaceX to resolve the issues, he added.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. An official leading Russia’s electronic warfare efforts told state media last month that the military had put Starlink on a “list of targets” and was developing capabilities to counter the service.
While Mr. Fedorov said the Starlink service should improve soon, some of the outages appeared to be due to Russian attacks, according to soldiers and officials. Any disruptions at critical moments on the battlefield further disadvantage the already overstretched Ukrainian army, they said.
“We are losing the electronic warfare battle,” said Ajax, the deputy commander of the 92nd Division’s Achilles Drone Battalion, who described in an interview the challenges his troops faced after the loss of Starlink connectivity.
“A day before the attacks, it was simply shut down,” said Ajax, who, in line with Ukrainian military policy, would be quoted only on the condition that he be identified by his call sign. “It got super, super slow.”
The disruptions put the entire unit at a disadvantage, said a drone pilot who goes by the call sign Kartel. He said he was in a garage without food or a sleeping bag during the first tank attacks of the Russian offensive this month. His team began conducting drone strikes, but were hampered by connection problems with Starlink. Communication had become so slow that soldiers had to use text messaging through chat apps, he said – and even then it took a while for the messages to be sent.
“In the first few hours the front was very dynamic. The enemy was moving. And we moved too,” he said. “We had to communicate quickly.”
For three days, he said, the unit held off the Russians, but not without difficulty. “It made everything more complicated,” he said. “Everything was more time consuming.”
Kari A. Bingen, a former U.S. Defense Department official and electronic warfare expert, said Starlink and other satellite communications could be disrupted by using a high-power radio frequency to overload interconnects. The invisible attacks are typically carried out from a vehicle with a large radio tower attached to the roof, she said.
“It is, of course, in the crosshairs of the Russian armed forces,” said Ms. Bingen, now director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “It affects the Ukrainian armed forces’ ability to communicate on the battlefield.”
Explanations for the Starlink outages in Ukraine last year vary. Several experts said Russia has become better at jamming the signal between satellites and Starlink terminals on the ground through the use of powerful and precise jammers. Others suspected the service was disrupted by special electronic weapons mounted on drones that can confuse the GPS signals from Starlink, the global positioning system used to track satellites.
A sharp increase in Starlink usage can also impact service. In some cases, technical limitations designed to prevent Russian forces from using Starlink have affected the service of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. At other times, disruptions can be more random, such as earlier this month when SpaceX reported global service issues due to solar storms.
Throughout the conflict, Ukrainian forces have tried various techniques to protect Starlink from attack, including placing the terminals in holes dug in the ground and placing metal grilles over them. Infozahyst, a Ukrainian company that works with the military and specializes in building electronic warfare tools, said it does not believe such improvised solutions are effective.
Starlink has given Mr. Musk outsized influence in the war because he controls where the satellite service is available and can decide to block access. In some cases, Ukrainian officials have appealed directly to Mr. Musk to activate Starlink access during military operations so they can carry out drone strikes across enemy lines – demands that the billionaire has not always agreed to. The US government, which bought Starlink terminals for Ukraine, has at times interfered in the negotiations.
Starlink is not sold directly to Russia. But this year, Ukrainian officials publicly expressed alarm that Russia was using Starlink terminals purchased from third parties, potentially undermining Ukraine’s connectivity advantage.
Experts have warned that Ukraine is overly dependent on a single company for such a vital resource, especially one run by someone as unpredictable as Mr. Musk. But Ukraine’s dependence on Starlink is unlikely to decrease. There are few alternatives for such a comprehensive and reliable service.
Mr Fedorov said the Ukrainian government was constantly testing new systems. The military has special systems for naval drones that have destroyed a number of Russian ships in the Black Sea, he said.
“But of course there is no mass-produced equivalent,” he said.
For Ajax, the Ukrainian commander, the loss of Starlink service brought back bad memories of the war. While fighting near the Russian border in 2022, his unit was sometimes cut off from Starlink, disrupting drone video feeds used to remotely target artillery. Instead, the unit used soldiers to covertly observe enemy positions and direct attacks.
“It’s become the old way with radio,” he said. “We had to say, ‘Go left 100 feet.’ It was super weird.”
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kiev, Ukraine, and Olha Kotiuzhanska from Kharkiv and Kramatorsk.
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2024-05-25 17:42:51
www.nytimes.com
