Ukraine's military is using drones to take out Starlink dishes used by Russian troops.
The Ukrainian Air Assault Forces today posted a video on Facebook, showing one drone blowing up an “enemy” Starlink dish. In the clip, the Russian Starlink dish sits next to a building. A Ukrainian-operated first-person-view (FPV) drone then crashes into the dish and explodes, causing the satellite equipment to break apart.
“Everyone has heard that the Russians have started using SpaceX satellite communication platforms, but so far we have not been able to capture them,” the post adds. In this case, the 71st Brigade of Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces spotted the Starlink dish and suspect that Russian soldiers stole or smuggled the dish for use in the ongoing war.
“Our FPV drones have stood firm, safeguarding international law and the respectable reputation of the company [SpaceX]. In short, there is no Starlink service available to the occupiers—at least not within the reach of our brigade’s fighters,” the post says.
Ukraine has been raising the alarm bells about Russian soldiers using “thousands” of Starlink dishes, which have possibly been sourced from unofficial Arab suppliers. Although SpaceX has blocked the satellite technology from working within Russia, it still allegedly functions in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government says it’s working with SpaceX to block Russia’s use of Starlink through a software algorithm. But it remains unclear if the efforts are paying off. In the meantime, it looks like the Ukrainian military is resorting to firepower to shut down the Starlink access.
On the same day, a Telegram account also posted a video showing the destruction of a Ukrainian drone apparently bombing separate Starlink dish.
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SpaceX hasn’t responded to a request for comment, but both the company and CEO Elon Musk initially denied the reports of Russian soldiers using Starlink dishes. Last week, the company also said: “If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed.”
Starlink works by fetching GPS coordinates of every Starlink dish, so presumably SpaceX has a view of all the Russian Starlink activity within Ukraine.
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