SpaceX has restricted Ukraine’s use of the Starlink Internet to control drones.
The company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, told Reuters that Starlink “was never intended to be used as a weapon, but the Ukrainians used it unintentionally and not as part of any agreement.”
Shotwell said there are certain things the company has done to limit the ability of the Ukrainian military to use Starlink to control drones. What kind of restrictions are in question, the president of the company refused to tell.
The Ukrainian military has not yet commented on this statement by Elon Musk’s company.
Since the beginning of the Muscovite attack on Ukraine, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet service has provided the Ukrainian military with broadband to defend against the Russian military. Ukraine effectively uses unmanned aerial vehicles to detect enemy positions, fire over long distances and drop bombs.
Shotwell declined to say what action SpaceX has taken.
Since the start of the war, SpaceX has privately delivered trucks to Ukraine with Starlink terminals, allowing the country’s military to communicate by connecting them and connecting the nearly 4,000 satellites SpaceX has already launched into low Earth orbit.
The US and French governments have paid for other shipments of Starlink terminals in addition to those privately funded by SpaceX.
Russia has previously attempted to jam Starlink signals in the region, though SpaceX has countered by beefing up the service’s software, Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, said.
In the fall of 2022, it became known that SpaceX applied to the Pentagon with a request to further take over the financing of the Starlink satellite communications systems in Ukraine, on which the communications of the Ukrainian military in the war zone depend.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.