How has Starlink changed the face of modern warfare? James O’Malley investigates
If someone had asked you early last year to predict the key figures in a hypothetical war between Russia and Ukraine, you probably wouldn’t have named Elon Musk. But as we’ve seen over the past 18 months, the world’s richest man and the mogul behind Tesla, SpaceX and now X, has played a surprisingly pivotal role in the war thanks to Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite broadband network.
First deployed in 2019, the Starlink network now has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit around the Earth, and the company continues to launch a couple of dozen or so on a weekly basis. Unlike previous attempts at satellite internet, what makes Starlink unique is that satellites are much closer to the ground, in Low Earth orbit (LEO), which reduces signal latency and increases speeds. As each satellite covers a much narrower patch, it can devote more bandwidth to each individual user.
As a result, Starlink subscribers can expect download speeds of between 25 and 220Mbits/sec and uploads of between 5 and 20Mbits/sec.
The service’s near-global availability means it’s hardly surprising that, soon after Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border in February 2022, Starlink was identified as a critical tool for the battle ahead. By May, 150,000 Starlink terminals were reportedly in use by Ukraine.
Today, it’s thought that most Ukrainian units have at least one Starlink terminal in their arsenal. And that means, for better or worse, Musk’s company has played a pivotal role in the conflict.
Reshaping war comms
“Communications on the battlefield have always shaped the way that commanders operate,” said Air Vice-Marshal Chris Moore, vice-president of defence and security at OneWeb, a rival satellite broadband firm that’s part-owned by the British government.
Though military technology has evolved dramatically over the past 70 years, until LEO satellite broadband came along, the fundamental principles remained the same. “The model that most major militaries have been using for a long time now is pretty much what was left after World War II,” said Moore.
“You have a large amount of bandwidth and connectivity at the rear in your headquarters, but as you get increasingly closer to the front line you have a paucity of bandwidth... that means people at the very edge, on the front line, often struggle to get the right information a
