Over the past week, Ukraine has received a stark reminder of its growing dependence on uninterrupted access to Elon Musk's Starlink and Starshield networks in its drone-heavy war against Russia, now in its fifth year. Ukraine has a fraction of Russia's resources, but its aggressive development of drone warfare on defensive and offensive fronts has helped it endure an onslaught from its much bigger adversary, which invaded Ukraine in early 2022. That was true until last week, when Ukraine reported a throttling of the Starshield network that was causing its drones to stop midflight and fall out of the sky.
The two SpaceX networks operate on a constellation of thousands of low-Earth satellites — Starlink is the commercial version, while Starshield is a military product licensed to the U.S. government and its partners, among them Ukraine. Kyiv's reliance on drones has made Starlink and Starshield nearly indispensable to its arsenal. When Ukraine experienced a disruption to those networks, it lost the shield of interceptors and drones that offered some protection against Russian drone and missile strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes Musk throttled Starshield at the request of U.S. officials, though the world's richest man has denied any role and said it's the U.S. government that controls the military-grade network. President Trump has also denied he's responsible for slowing the network. However, CBS News reported Tuesday that Musk was behind the disruption, though a number of questions remain unanswered.
There has also been conflicting information about whether full access to the networks has been restored. As of Wednesday afternoon, Starlink remained throttled, Zelenskyy's office confirmed. Here's what's known about Starshield and Starlink — and their role in the Ukraine war.
On Oct. 13, Ukraine's military began experiencing sudden difficulties with Starshield equipment, making it more difficult to carry out missions with fast-moving drones, officials and soldiers told CBS News. Ukrainian soldiers said they noticed "speed limits" had been imposed on their use of SpaceX's Starshield internet dishes, the military-grade Starlink dishes that Ukrainians strap onto their drones so remote pilots can maintain their connection with the unmanned aircraft as they fly toward Russian targets. Access was restricted by turning off dishes on Ukrainian drones flying above a certain speed, causing them to fall out of the sky.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense sources said SpaceX had unilaterally imposed the Starshield restrictions without informing them beforehand. Zelenskyy said Saturday the speed limits had prevented Ukraine from using Starshield to shoot down Russian Shahed attack drones. Starshield, the military-grade satellite network, runs on the same constellation of satellites as its civilian sister, Starlink, but has fewer technical limitations and more advanced security features.
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