By Stavros Atlamazoglou
-
Since the attack began in February, Russia has tried to disrupt communications with Ukraine.
-
Ukrainian troops and civilians have turned to SpaceX’s Starlink to keep those channels open.
-
Chinese researchers have said Beijing needs to develop a way to disable or destroy Starlink satellites.
Since the start of the Russian invasion, the US and its NATO and European allies have sent Ukraine security, economic and humanitarian aid worth tens of billions of dollars.
Aid to the embattled Ukrainians is also coming from the general public and private sectors. One of the most notable contributions is that of Starlink, a satellite communications system from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
SpaceX says it has delivered 15,000 Starlink kits to Ukraine since the end of February. The devices provide the Ukrainian military with a resilient and reliable means of communication. Ukrainian troops have used them to coordinate counter-attacks or call in artillery support, while Ukrainian civilians have used the system to keep in touch with loved ones inside and outside the country.
Beleaguered Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol could only communicate with Kiev and the world because they had a Starlink device.
A Starlink internet terminal in Odessa, Ukraine, March 15, 2022. Nina Lyashonok/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images
There are other commercial satellite companies that offer similar services, but SpaceX has developed one of the most robust networks. Starlink uses a new generation of low Earth orbit satellites that are resilient and powerful because they act like a constellation.
Starlink has been “very effective,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Wired. “It has helped us a lot, in many moments related to the blockade of our towns and villages and related to the occupied territory. Sometimes we lost communication with those places completely.”
In occupied cities without access to Starlink, Russians have told citizens that Ukraine no longer existed as a country, but those tactics have not been widely successful due to Starlink, the Ukrainian leader said.
Ukrainians’ access to Starlink has disrupted the information campaign of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brig. Gene. Steve Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit, told Politico.
To this day, Putin has never been able to silence Zelensky, Butow said.
‘We need Starlink’
The Ukrainian government has asked Starlink to counter Russian cyber attacks on its own satellite communications.
In the hours before the invasion began on February 24, Moscow launched “AcidRain” against Viasat, a US satellite communications company that provided communications services to the Ukrainian military. “AcidRain” was an “eraser” designed to target Viasat modems and routers and wipe their data before turning it off permanently.
Satellite antennas on a destroyed residential building in Hostomel, Ukraine, April 22, 2022. Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In the early hours of the conflict, when the fog of war is thickest, the inability of Ukrainian commanders to communicate with each other and with their troops could have been catastrophic. In the months since, Russia has also stepped up its “jamming & hacking efforts” against Starlink, Musk said.
“What do they say to junior officers in training? Your main weapon is your radio. You’re there to coordinate and direct the battle, not necessarily to kick in doors and be the first man in the room,” a Special Forces soldier and communications specialist assigned to a unit of the U.S. National Guard said. army to Insider.
“That concept is the same for the young infantry second lieutenant up to and including the commander in chief. Good communication is everything!” added the Special Forces operator, who was not authorized to speak to the media.
The cyber attack on Viasat demonstrated the value of a distributed satellite communications network, but cyber attacks are not the only way to go after such networks.
Tap or attack?
In modern warfare against highly capable adversaries, having a distributed and resilient satellite network is the key to success. The US military has its own satellites for that purpose, and commercial satellite communications have been used on battlefields in the past.
As those systems become more important to military operations, soldiers are also looking at how they can disrupt them. In a paper published in May, Chinese military researchers called for the development of “soft and hard kill methods” to disable or destroy the entire constellation of Starlink satellites in the event of a conflict.
The researchers did not describe any specific means of countering Starlink, but said that “the entire system” should be targeted, which “requires some cheap, very efficient measures”.
In the US, the military and intelligence services play a role both in protecting US satellite networks and in attacking those of adversaries. The division of labor largely depends on the goal: tapping into or attacking the network to shut it down.
For example, the US Cyber Command, which is responsible for the military’s cyberspace operations, is likely to focus on how Chinese generals speak to each other rather than what they discuss during their conversations.
Cyber Command Operators “want to really understand the networks themselves. They don’t really care what information gets transferred on that network. They just want to know that network is being used and its nature (military, financial, diplomatic, etc.). ),” a former US intelligence officer with a background in signals intelligence told Insider.
The National Security Agency, the main signal and intelligence collector in the US, is said to be less concerned about the specific nodes and more focused on what is being broadcast. Intelligence officials would like to know what Chinese generals are saying to better inform US policymakers.
High-level signals intelligence is generally the closest, and there are “very few people who have access to it because it’s very technical, complex information that requires a lot of analysis,” the former intelligence officer said, speaking anonymously to avoid compromises on an ongoing basis. cooperation with the US government.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a veteran of the Hellenic Army (national service with the 575th Marines Battalion and Army Headquarters), and a graduate of Johns Hopkins University.
† Insider
