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Russia is trying to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, analysts said.
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They said this had not been achieved despite the development of a growing arsenal of electronic warfare systems.
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Satellites have proven vital in military operations and communications between Ukrainian troops.
Russia is trying to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, according to space war analysts.
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has been using jamming systems to deny Ukrainian forces access to commercial satellites.
There is Mixers were installed in their tanks interfering with satellite signals and preventing exploding drones, Disrupted Ukraine’s GPS-guided bombsAnd Ukraine’s drones are stuckUkrainian operators are being forced come closer to their targets on the front lines.
Access to satellites played a critical role in Ukraine’s defense against Russia. especially access to Musk’s satellite network.
Satellite internet kept Ukrainians online and their businesses running during the war. It also made it easier for soldiers to communicate on the front lines and for weapon systems and unmanned aerial vehicles to continue operating.
At the same time, Russia’s jamming has become increasingly better. Disrupting Ukraine’s most advanced weaponsblocking Ukraine’s combat capacity.
But Russian efforts to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellites have so far failed, space warfare analysts said.
Jamming resistant signals
“Russia certainly wants to find a way to block Ukraine’s use of Starlink,” said Brian Weeden, chief program officer at the nonprofit Secure World Foundation.
“But that’s much easier said than done because of the architecture of the constellation,” Weeden told Business Insider.
Starlink’s signals are stronger and more intense because its satellites operate at a much lower altitude (about 340 miles) than traditional geocommunications satellites (about 22,000 miles). According to Starlink’s website.
Because Starlink satellites are closer to Earth, latency (the delay between a user’s action and the response on the network) is shorter. This speeds up streaming, online gaming, video conferencing, and other activities on the Internet.
In the context of electronic warfare, this makes Starlink’s signals much harder to jam, Weeden said. As a result, he added, Russian hackers have not been able to hack Starlink so far.
He said Russia’s efforts have not yielded much success so far, although there is “very little” open data available to examine Russia’s electronic warfare attacks on Starlink.
Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made a similar point.
“They keep trying but they don’t seem to be very successful,” Bingen told BI.
He said Starlink satellites are both “resilient” and “agile” and that Starlink operators are constantly updating their software to overcome Russian attacks.
Russia has hit satellites multiple times since its invasion of Ukraine
According to Counterspace Timeline Russia has attempted to approach, target or infiltrate U.S. and foreign satellite networks multiple times since its invasion of Ukraine as part of CSIS’s Aerospace Security Project.
Russian hackers on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine started A cyber weapon against the American satellite communications provider Viasat, which provides military communications services to Ukraine.
The attack hit numerous satellite communications stations, affecting hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine and Europe.
According to a evaluation Following the US cyberattack, Russia launched cyberattacks on commercial satellite communications networks in an attempt to disrupt Ukrainian command and control throughout the invasion of Ukraine.
In March 2022, Finland’s largest airline, Finnair, reported several cases of GPS jamming as its commercial aircraft approached Kaliningrad, Russia. According to Reuters.
The President of Finland at the time, Sauli Niinisto meeting with US President Joe Biden to discuss strengthening defense ties between Finland and NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
SpaceX, the company that owns Starlink, was also attacked in April 2022.
An unnamed Pentagon official said its engineers were fighting off Russian jamming attacks by updating the system’s software. I told BI In that case.
Inside Publish on X A month after the attack, Elon Musk said Starlink had “so far resisted Russia’s cyberwarfare interception and hacking attempts.”
But he also said Russian hackers were “stepping up their efforts.”
No other Russian jamming or hacking attacks on Starlink have been reported or made public so far.
SpaceX has refused to provide BI updates on Russia’s attempts to jam or hack its Starlink satellites.
Russia’s growing arsenal of electronic warfare systems
Russia is developing an arsenal of electronic warfare systems aimed at jamming communications satellites. According to Space Watch Global.
These are the R-330Zh Zhitel, a mobile truck-mounted jamming communications station, and the Bylina-MM, a system designed to suppress communications satellites, the magazine reported.
They have antennas mounted on trucks or vehicles that transmit a high-powered signal to try to saturate any receivers tuned to Starlink frequencies.
Another is the Krasukha-4 mobile EW system, which can counter airborne early warning and control systems (AWACS) and other airborne radars within an effective range of about 300 kilometers, according to the magazine.
According to leaked US secret intelligence document Obtained Russia has also been testing Tobol electronic warfare systems for several months, hoping to block Starlink’s signals, The Washington Post wrote in 2023.
Russia also has a wide range of counterspace weapons, such as direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles and powerful lasers that can physically destroy satellites in orbit.
Ukraine is taking a step back
Ukraine was targeting them.
In July, it was revealed that Ukraine’s special forces destroyed a Tirada and a “Leer-2” electronic system with drones. video shared by the command of the forces.
Last November, the Ukrainian army, among them “Pole-21“electronic warfare system and Svet-KU.
As recently as January, the same special forces aforementioned They helped destroy the Russian Tirada-2, a portable radio-electronic suppression system designed to intercept communications satellites, interfering with satellite communications in eastern Ukraine.
Bingen said it was “not surprising” that Ukrainian forces wanted to remove these jammers from the battlefield because they harmed drones and sensitive munitions.
“This kind of, this area of electronic warfare is going to increase more and more,” Bingen said.
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