Ukraine, this is how Musk with Starlink supported the resistance
In Ukraine, Elon Musk's satellites have aided military and civil resistance against Putin, no less than arms supplies. The article by Tino Oldani for Italy Today
If Volodymyr Zelensky manages to send his video messages to the whole world every day, he owes it to Starlink, a satellite communication system owned by the American billionaire Elon Mask, through the SpaceX company. So far, the Russians have tried several times to intercept Starlink's signals, to turn them off and silence Zelensky. No way. The technology of this system is out of their knowledge, so far ahead, therefore out of their hacking ability. Thus, in the last three months, Zelensky has been able to clearly defeat Vladimir Putin in terms of communication, which has its importance in every war. As for the outcome of the battle on the ground, despite the strong Ukrainian resistance, the result is not the same. The war in the Donbass continues, and no one knows when and how it will end.
Certainly, even in the coming weeks, Zelensky will continue to talk on video with the leaders of the West, with his military and with millions of followers, again thanks to Musk's satellites. And the Ukrainian soldiers at the front will do the same to agree with the leaders, at a distance of hundreds of kilometers, the military actions to be carried out. But what is Starlink? How and why did it become so important in the war in Ukraine? On the subject, Politico publishes a beautiful investigation, signed by three journalists (Christopher Miller, Mark Scott, Bryan Bender), who interviewed both Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield and their leaders in Kiev. The result is an exemplary account of how Musk's satellite communications have become a formidable weapon against Putin's aggression, a weapon so far elusive and unbeatable for the Russians.
At first, the generals in Putin's service were convinced that they had an advantage in this area as well. On February 24, reveals Politico , an hour before invading Ukraine, "Russia successfully hacked Viasat, an American satellite provider whose network was used by the Ukrainian army to communicate with front-line troops." A big deal. To overcome the blackout, Kiev's military experts realized that the only possible solution was to immediately activate the 50 satellites that SpaceX had launched over Eastern Europe, as part of the Starlink project, aimed at launching 40,000 satellites over the next few years. in the Earth's orbit. A program that, however, was proceeding slowly due to bureaucratic delays. What to do?
"On February 26, two days after the invasion, Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine who also acts as a digital minister," writes Politico , "tweeted directly to Musk, asking to urgently activate the Starlink satellite system and send the equipment necessary to be able to use it in Ukraine ». The response was immediate. "They tweeted to Elon from Kiev, so we turned it on," the SpaceX chief revealed at a conference in California, showing the Ukrainian minister's tweet and immediate response. Musk himself, an executive of the US Defense Innovation Unit revealed, as soon as he received the tweet, he called a meeting and decided: "I want to bring Starlink over Ukraine".
Result: «The United States, the European Union and other NATO countries have donated billions of dollars in military equipment to Ukraine. But no less important was Musk's Starlink, which became an unexpected lifeline both on the battlefield and in the war for public opinion ». Starlink, explains the investigation, «is based on a group of satellites the size of a table, which fly up to 130 miles above Ukraine and broadcast high-speed internet access. Ukrainian drones have relied on Starlink to drop bombs on Russian forward positions. People in besieged cities near the Russian border have kept in touch with their loved ones via encrypted satellites. And Zelensky has regularly updated millions of followers on social media thanks to Musk's network, as well as being able to make Zoom calls with the world's political leaders, from Joe Biden to Emmanuel Macron ».
Further on: "We have more than 11 thousand Starlink stations that help us every day in our struggle," explains Minister Federov. «Thanks to the generators that turn on Starlink, we are ready to renew any connection even if there is no light and no internet connection». This explains why even the troops who resisted for more than two months in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were able to maintain contact with their commanders and even with Zelensky until the end, as well as giving interviews to the media: they had a Starlink system in the factory besieged by the Russians ». Thanks to Starlink, says Steve Butow, US general, «Putin has never been able to silence Zelensky. On a strategic level, this has destroyed Russia's disinformation campaign, as well as Putin's attempt to cut Ukraine out of communications with the outside world ”.
Russian attempts to intercept Starlink's signals, to hack them, have so far failed. “Unlike traditional high-orbit satellites”, explains the investigation, “the new generation of satellites, in low-altitude orbit, works on the basis of a constellation of several satellites. This configuration makes interceptions more difficult, if not impossible, since the attacker would have to identify all the satellites at the same time to paralyze the entire system ». Furthermore, Starlink is easily defensible as the computer code of each device can be changed quickly, in response to hackers. Musk revealed that the Kremlin has stepped up attacks on its network over the past month. But it was enough for Starlink to rewrite the codes, maintaining an unbridgeable technological advantage over Putin's Russia.
Article published on italiaoggi.it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/ucraina-come-musk-con-starlink-ha-sostenuto-la-resistenza/ on Sun, 12 Jun 2022 05:36:33 +0000.