Comment by michaelt 2 days ago
Yes, you may recall some controversy a few years back when Musk made some threats along those lines.
There are alternatives if you only need short range, or if you can tolerate high latency. And of course there are fire-and-forget cruise missiles that don't need communications at all.
But there aren't all that many other options. Historically, satellite internet companies like Iridium, Globalstar and Teledesic have not fared well.
Starlink both in technology, availability and regulation angle is advancing so fast that saying "is it now" and "was it then" are quite different.
This is where the hex grid was previously on. Wayback machine doesn't seem to work as it's a web app https://www.starlink.com/map
Well, per other comments, Starlink terminals apparently do work in Russia.
And Musk did exactly that per numerous reports. Given his erratic behavior since around 2018, it's not hard to believe. The other day he was literally threatening to stop Dragon launches for NASA.
Iridium works extremely well for what it was designed for – truly global, low latency communications without requiring a directional antenna. Unfortunately, that also means very low data rates.
It only gained packed-switched data with the second generation satellite network, but data rates are still very low (think hundreds of kbps, and I believe even that needs high-gain antennas).
~Iridium~ devices were bricked in the first days of the invasion, iirc. That's why starlink was such a big deal, and that's why the usmil wanted it "yesterday" after it proved itself in ua. They had to set up a dedicated unit to deal with starlink, as every branch was trying to get it on their own and complicated purchasing. That unit / project was also called starshield, confusing the matter with the other starshield project that uses starlink buses + ng sensor packages.
edit: it was Viasat not Iridium, I got them mixed up.
Viasat fixed modems got bricked at start of the war in Ukraine and some collateral one's in border areas.
Interesting how the US goes absolutely ballistic about some random dude violating the "Computer Security Act" on a small scale, but didn't react at all to this massive, incredibly impactful, attack.
You are right, thanks. I mixed them up. Iridium is also providing service in ua now, and was unaffected at the start of the war.
"Some" is an understatement lol. Here in Germany 3.800 (!) wind turbines lost remote control (and thus were forced offline) until the terminals could be changed because their command uplink was via Viasat.
It was only made to appear a controversy for clicks and Ukrainians (understandably) trying to bend the rules.
The thing came with a clear limit "this thing works in these cells of this big hex grid". And they drove it off that hex grid. Plan and simple.
Its like if the US-supplied HIMARS came with some built-in limit that it cannot be used to target known Russian nuclear installments, and they'd try to do that.
It's not that those things are unquestionable, but they are limits that would need US consultation as US obviously doesn't want the thing to escalate from being a defensive war to something else.