One technician climbing a tower. One FPV drone closing in. It sounds like a single tragic frame from an endless war. But it captures something larger: Russia's scramble to replace what Elon Musk took.

Earlier this month, Ukraine appealed directly to Musk, asking him to disable Russian military access to SpaceX’s Starlink internet system. The Russians had been running thousands of unauthorized terminals along the front — smuggled through Dubai and ex-Soviet republics, activated in countries where Starlink is legal, then shipped into the war zone.

What makes this more than a communications setback is something few outside the conflict fully grasp. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are now coming to scale on both sides of this war. They haul ammunition and supplies into what soldiers call the kill zone, guided remotely by operators miles away. Starlink terminals mounted on board make that possible. Without Starlink, the robots stop. And soldiers go in instead.

The result, according to sources familiar with Russian battlefield operations, is that Russia is now losing even more soldiers than before — men replacing machines that no longer work.

  • PugJesus@piefed.socialEnglish
    89·
    6 days ago

    God, it makes me more furious at him than ever. Not that he turned it off, but revealing just what a fucking dependency this has been the whole fucking time for Russia. How many Ukrainians have died because of Musk waiting 'til now to turn it off?

    Fuck.

    And no one suggest that one of the world’s richest men couldn’t have his fucking engineers figure out a solution to Russian-used Starlink terminals in Ukraine before four fucking years passed. “We can’t figure out how to distinguish our own devices” yeah fucking bet.

    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialEnglish
      36·
      6 days ago

      Yeah. Even if we go by the whole “they weren’t authorized” narrative, then that just makes it look like Elon turned a blind eye. How could you not know for that long!? Surely, they would have picked up on some anomaly in a fucking war zone.

      • snowdrop@lemmy.caEnglish
        24·
        6 days ago

        I wonder what really changed behind the scenes to make him take action. It makes me think that, after all, there isn’t Epstein-related kompromat on him. OTOH we already know he’s a k addled manchild so it doesn’t have to make sense.