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Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Service is Now Active Over Ukraine (yahoo.com) 105

Posted by EditorDavid from the Starlink-wars dept.
"Elon Musk says SpaceX's Starlink satellites are now active over Ukraine after a request from the embattled country's leadership to replace internet services destroyed by the Russian attack," reports the Independent, in a story shared by Slashdot readers schwit1 and SubMitt: Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion has left parts of the country without internet, while SpaceX has launched thousands of communications satellites to bring broadband to hard to reach areas of the world.

"Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route," the entrepreneur tweeted on Saturday.

The move came after Ukraine's vice prime minister urged Mr Musk to help them out, as the SpaceX system does not require any fiber-optic cables.
Newsweek reports that on Friday Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister also asked Apple's Tim Cook to stop providing products and services to Russians — including the Apple Store.
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Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Service is Now Active Over Ukraine More

Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Service is Now Active Over Ukraine

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  • but a standard operation procedure should be made and given to the us government. if they plan to go above and beyond in situations like this so much more the priority...

    • by SOP i mean emergency SOP.

    • What exactly is it that makes you think that the US government wasn't involved with this decision?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        What exactly is it that makes you think that the US government was involved with this decision. Why don't you admit you don't have a clue?

  • he did the same things with the cave case and the children and his "submarine". shut the fuck up once.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      he did the same things with the cave case and the children and his "submarine". shut the fuck up once.

      No, totally different. In this case a Ukrainian minister directly asked SpaceX for help with Starlink.

      https://twitter.com/FedorovMyk... [twitter.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What are they going to do about receivers though? They will have to ship those in quantity to Ukraine.

        Hopefully this doesn't encourage Putin to try out some anti-satellite weapons.

  • It's one thing to live in a country at war. But no Facebook, TitTok or lolcats? Oh the humanity!

    • Imagine not being able to make stupid posts on Slashdot.

    • Having Internet access would probably be very useful for combat as it provides options for secure communication that requires no special equipment, and basically everybody already knows how to use it.

      Speak of equipment, if anybody needs a reminder of just how incompetent Russia's military actually is:

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnt... [reddit.com]

      Basically Putin is sending his troops in with equipment that is so old and beat up that the Ukrainians don't even consider it worth keeping and using. The only thing of value th

      • Re: Phew Ukrainians are saved! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@[ ]oo.com ['yah' in gap]> on Sunday February 27, 2022 @06:47AM (#62308227) Homepage Journal

        Are we sure this is incompetence? Most of these will be mercenaries and, since Putin has more to fear from his own military than from Russian protesters, the rest will be the intelligentsia in the military. He's kept most of his forces in reserve. It's entirely possible that those are the loyal troops with decent hardware, driving the unwilling ahead of them to be slaughtered by the Ukrainians. Putin is far too smart to have a ragtag military on the edge of collapse. You can't maintain a military dictatorship with the gear that's currently being used.

        • That might be the case, I am with you that this seems very counter-intuitive to what we know about the Russian military but if even if that is the case this has been a huge blunder on their part because this war was going to be covered worldwide, this was a war of optics just as much as tactics so the smart strategy would be to put your best foor forward. Come out the gate with overhelming force, shock and awe, all that. The whole point of this was for Russia to send a message to it's neighbors that it's

          • There's a third possibility which is that he knows that he has to wear Ukraine down and that he's going to lose some people and equipment. So why not send in the most expendable stuff first. Did you ever watch Star Trek? It's always the guys in red uniforms. Same thing here. Send in the old stinky equipment first since the first wave of invasion is where you heaviest losses will be. Russia has a conscript army. He can get more troops. Equipment is harder. He's got to stroke XiPings tiny cock for tha

            • Might be the case but if he was interested in wearing them down it still is bad tactics. Does not explain why they still don't have air superiority. Does not explain the very public fuel and logistics issues they are experiencing. Even if you send in the lowly concripts up front you want to keep them well supported, wars are won on logistics and supply lines. It's the part of the US military that is it's most powerful advantage.

              The air force thing is the real perplexing part, I believe it's been confirme

              • I hope you are correct that the Soviet system of Putin has made the military incompetent. That would be very welcome news.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by jd ( 1658 )

                  Depends. If ISIS decides to conquer Russia, it might not be so good for them to have an incompetent military. The law of unintended consequences is generally one to keep an eye on.

                  • ISIS and their ilk take advantage of economic hardship to radicalize and then conquer through terrorism. If military mattered, the US would fared well in both Iraq and Afghanistan. An unintended consequence of the sanctions against Russia might be the rise of Russian domestic extremists. That tends to be a negative cycle where the poor economy motivates extremism which damages the economy more.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by jd ( 1658 )

                      If military mattered, regardless of competence, they would have. But the evidence produced by Manning did not reveal a high level of competence. If a gunner can't tell the difference between a Stinger missile and a sheet of corrugated iron, a fortified compound from an international hospital, or a British tank column from an Iraqi army, I'd have a very hard time thinking that competence was a terribly high priority. As for the military compound the allies abandoned that was packed with PETN, we're extremely

                    • I don't know where you got the idea that the "FBI apparently believes that the US military and local police forces are infiltrated by extremists to the point of total dysfunction." And I'm not aware of any "infiltration" Maybe you use the term differently. The US has many extremists. Probably at about the same rate as any other developed country. The extremists with full bellies do their jobs as real estate agents, plumbers, welders, computer programmers, or whatever throughout the day. At night they

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jd ( 1658 )

                That is entirely plausible. It would reconcile what you'd expect from Putin with the results that we're seeing. In the end, the difference has to be explained. Putin is not stupid, but a corrupt and stupid officer corps is entirely viable.

                Putin is quite plausibly insane, but insane people still follow an internal logic even if it doesn't agree with observable reality. So far, I'm struggling to see the logic. If it's not to intentionally lose the first few battles, then antique gear and haphazard tactics wou

            • He can get more troops up until the point where those troops decide that Putin is the enemy rather than Ukraine.

              • I have a feeling the troops have already decided that. But self-preservation is a funny thing. You can't really avoid the conscription and you can't really engage against the Ukrainians and win The only hope is that you get a chance to surrender. Mass defections / desertions are unlikely.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )

        Having Internet access would probably be very useful for combat as it provides options for secure communication that requires no special equipment

        If your country's military relies on the internet for strategic communication, it deserves to be invaded.

        • So you're saying that the US deserves to be invaded? [wikipedia.org]

        • If your country's military relies on the internet for strategic communication, it deserves to be invaded.

          That's a really, incredibly stupid thing to say. The TCP/IP stack was designed to work on interconnected hardware that isn't necessarily reliable, and equipment and the lines of communication can be severed by the enemy, and so it routes around the damage. Ukraine's situation is exactly that: The Russian's have already taken out their normal military channels. So they're using the internet to do EXACTLY what it was designed to do. In fact, it was designed SPECIFICALLY FOR military purposes in scenarios EXAC

    • Re:Phew Ukrainians are saved! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Sunday February 27, 2022 @07:11AM (#62308279)

      Because it would be so much better to let the Ukraine get cut off from the internet and allow Putin to control what information gets out of the country and how it's presented?

      • On one hand this will help Ukranians who need information.

        On the other hand what they really need to do to prevent being tracked is to be able to turn off their cellular modems, and use only wifi. And unfortunately almost no phones let you do that. They have airplane mode which shuts off all wireless comms, they have wifi off mode, but they don't have cellular off mode. A paranoid view of why that is, which seems justified when Apple and Google are both part of PRISM, is that it would interfere with trackin

          • Taking the SIM out doesn't prevent you from making emergency calls, which obviously also means it doesn't prevent your phone from communicating with towers. You don't need a subscription to be tracked by towers, they can do it with time-of-flight analysis known as DTOA.

        • iPhones let you turn on airplane mode, then turn on WiFi, and will operate like you said. Not sure about other phones.
          • Android phones are the same, flight mode will turn off all radio transmissions and then you can turn on WiFi and Bluetooth as required.

        • what they really need to do to prevent being tracked is to be able to turn off their cellular modems, and use only wifi. And unfortunately almost no phones let you do that. They have airplane mode which shuts off all wireless comms, they have wifi off mode, but they don't have cellular off mode.

          Actually, they do. On any iPhone from at least the last decade, probably more, simply turn on Airplane Mode, wait a sec for it to disable everything, then turn WiFi back on. The cellular modem remains disabled but you’re able to enjoy the in-flight entertainment being served up over WiFi. I’d imagine Android let’s you do the exact same. It’s actually really useful if you know you’ll be in an area with poor or no cellular reception (or you’re on vacation and don’t wa

        • Huh? The iPhone allows you to turn off any particular service you want (or turn on any particular service you want). It's right in the main lock screen.
        • Huh? Every phone in the world allows you to enable WiFi in airplane mode? What are you talking about?

      • The real question is how satellites they don't have receiver equipment for is supposed to help. Is this for any starlink customers that moved to Ukraine with their equipment despite it previously not working there? ðY

  • The request seems to have come from the Vice Prime Ministers verified twitter account @FedorovMykhailo who yesterday called for an IT army https://twitter.com/FedorovMyk... [twitter.com] with a link to a telegram channel that's seemingly misspelt. There's also a twitter account @ItArmyOfUkraine https://twitter.com/ItArmyOfUk... [twitter.com] that uses a different telegram channel. Any insightful comments appreciated.

  • what good is it if nobody has satellite dishes?

    • Or electricity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      The Starlink terminals are the satellite dish and a WiFi hotspot. If they also sent a solar panel to power it, it would be totally independent.

      • The problem is really that the dish+router draws about 140w peak power and more than 50w minimum power, so the solar panel and batteries to run such for a long time in winter in Ukraine would need to be fairly massive.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by crow ( 16139 )

          So a standard rooftop panel at 340 W only needs 42% efficiency to cover it. Of course, if it has to convert to AC and back to DC, there's some loss there. Still, during the day, you can get it working with a single panel. I trust the SpaceX engineers sending this equipment have given these issues some thought, and they may send solar panels with them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jzanu ( 668651 )
            Ratings for solar panels are not the actual productivity, just the safe maximum capacity. Actual production depends on solar irradiance at the site, and the system structure. A simple single inverter setup will drop the voltage anytime there is a shadow on any panel that decreases current from it, despite irradiance on all the other panels. A proper setup has micro-inverters on each panel to avoid that issue. Even then the system produces based on the irradiance, and at the highest intensity of the day whic

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dwywit ( 1109409 )

              Panel strings used with single inverters have bypass diodes located in the cabling terminal. Shade on a single panel only drops production from that panel, not the whole string.

              At least that's how my system works.

  • Thank you (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thank you. Now people will say ohh thats not important blah blah, but it IS important, ukrainian military needs situational awareness so do civilians, they need to know where the russians are. Having access to upto date satellite images, having the ability to securely communicate with western intelligence agencies from anywhere can make a difference. Russia knows where the ukrainian troops and tanks are, with this ukrainians should also know where the russian assets are.
  • If the signal from one of these hits a Russian plane it looks like a radar lock to them and they're going to fire on it. So these are worse than useless they are actively dangerous to anyone using them.

    But Musk was never one to let good crisis go to waste. If he actually cares about Ukraine he can stop retweeting edgy Hitler memes (Google it if you don't know what I mean, it's actually worse than it sounds) and use some of the enormous power that comes with all that money to push back against the world'

    • If the signal from one of these hits a Russian plane it looks like a radar lock to them and they're going to fire on it.

      Good lord. I read stuff like this... do you even know when you're speaking so confidently without knowing the first thing about anything? Do you really think just having an idea somehow makes it true?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      "If the signal from one of these hits a Russian plane it looks like a radar lock to them and they're going to fire on it."

      Russia's tech is so shit I doubt their ATS rocket could even reach LEO.

      • I think that the OP was imagining that a Starlink base station would look like a threat to an airborne defense. Not the satellites in LEO.

        Personally I don't know much about it but I highly doubt it.

    • So you're an utter retard who knows nothing of the power levels or beam profile of military radar. Go write fanfiction for a cartoon or something.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        Not to mention Ukraine has ACTUAL radar and an airforce

        • and the Russians STILL don't have air superiority over Ukraine, lolz. Several countries have been sending Ukraine the stinger missiles, happy hunting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      Really. Starlink terminals output look like radar lock.

      Did you take your medications this morning?

    • Hahahahahahaha. You think someone would confuse Starlink's AESA antenna signal with, I dunno, an AESA radar signal from a fight jet (none of Ukraine's jet has AESA)

      i was going to mod this down, but this is too funny for me to resist posting. Hahahaha. Your hatred for Musk has reduced your IQ to room temperature level.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thogard ( 43403 )

      This depends on the frequencies that are used to detect radar lock and how good that equipment is in detecting the changes in that signal. 64-QAM would look like noise on the carrier to older systems or coordination data and anti-jamming for a multistatioc radar for newer systems.

      The old signal lock systems just had a wide band radar receiver that was tuned to enemy frequencies to alert the pilot. Newer ones would use doppler shift to figure the transmitter is getting closer. Modern systems have to deal

  • ... in Afghanistan. They could probably use that now in Ukraine.

    • Fuck off to Russia you Trumptard.

      None of that stuff was left to be much use; some was given to them (assuming they'd fight back) plus you've got people bitching about old equipment left (priced at new) they are just itching to ditch and probably MOST that $ was Pentagon accounting! $100,000 coffee machines etc. Only existing as numbers on paper and in the pockets of the grafters.

      Any of the accounting crooks at the Pentagon must have been rejoicing over the opportunity to launder $ into that untraceable su

      • The entire withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster due in large part to Donald Trump's ego. His administration made a 'treaty' with the Taliban, the Taliban almost immediately violated it, and rather than admit that the treaty was a hilarious failure, the Taliban was allowed to run roughshod. Joe Biden inherited an Afghanistan with a resurgent Taliban, constantly gaining ground against local forces abandoned by their US allies, chasing down those who had worked with American forces who had been denied es
  • Apple and android should shut down any phone/tablet in Russia. That would cripple communications and be a huge blow.

  • Can we stop the constant misinformation please?

    The attack was clearly provoked by the USA bringing Ukraine too close to a NATO membership.

  • Who'd he call a pedo this time?

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