A potted history of Ukraine and communications

[Suff]

This article is all about how one company managed to keep communications open in Ukraine in the middle of a war designed to shut those communications down.

One part of the article I like is about the art of the possible when needs must.

SpaceX, whose goal is to launch more than 40,000 satellites into so-called low Earth orbit in the coming years, quickly positioned roughly 50 satellites ready to be used in the Eastern European country. But red tape, including official government approval needed to turn on the system, slowed down the rollout.


Then, Russia attacked. Two days after the invasion, on February 26, Fedorov — the Ukrainian vice prime minister who doubles as the country’s digital minister — tweeted directly at Musk to urgently send Starlink equipment. Two days after that, the first shipment showed up.

“They tweeted at Elon and so we turned it on,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, told an audience at the California Institute of Technology on March 7 in reference to Starlink’s arrival in Ukraine. “That was our permission. That was the letter from the minister. It was a tweet.”

The article is worth reading if only to understand just how critical good communications has become to our society today. Never more so in the middle of a fight for your lives.

[Workingman]

Ukraine is going to lose Luhansk, Donetsk and parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. Already have, that battle is won. Starlink did not save them.

They are what Putin wants and Starlink will not stop him because the Russians do not use Starlink for their comms.

He wants a land bridge from the Russian border to Crimea and the Black Sea, why can't West see that?

The one good thing is that the Black Sea fleet cannot get get out as the Bosporus is not in their control. We own that.

[Workingman]

Despite what you Hawks say we do not control the Black Sea, the skies or the land - the Russians do. Their armaments are equal to ours and do not need Starlink. What they are doing is abhorrent, yes, but, like it or not, they are winning. The only way we can stop them is to go in with force and troops - that's WWIIII. We. Will. Not. Do. It.

We need to talk, seriously talk.

Sadly the Hawks won't let us.

[victor]

I read this morning that Putin is now talking about Sweden ,so which bit of Sweden shall we concede to him? And then maybe Finland?

[Suff]

He wants a land bridge from the Russian border to Crimea and the Black Sea, why can't West see that?

They can see it perfectly. What they are saying is that just because you invaded Crimea and we let you take it doesn't mean you can just take what you want because you want it.

If that were true those with Nuclear weapons could re-write the borders of the world in a decade.

There is no point in talking until the aggressor realises that aggression is not the way to get what they want. It is 2022, not 1922 and land borders are not re-drawn at the whim or one or two countries. If for no other reason Russia has to lose this because allowing Russia to gain anything from this kind of action opens the door to annexation of Taiwan, the closing of the south China Sea, closing of Arctic sea routes and a whole raft of other action. Africa would likely see the first impact of this followed by South America.

Under the UN, countries allowed membership are countries and recognised as such. Another member of the UN should not just decide that they are not a country and take their land from them, either entirely or in part. Under the UN, the entire world should act to stop this kind of larceny.

The fact that it has not means the UN is broken. But NATO is not.

So when Russia is willing to talk sense is time enough to talk. That will be when Ukraine is willing to talk to Russia about the surrender and withdrawal of Russian forces. There is absolutely no point in talking before because Russia still thinks it can get away with stealing (let's not justify it with mealy mouthed words such as annexing), parts of Ukraine by military force.

[Suff]

Despite what you Hawks say we do not control the Black Sea, the skies or the land - the Russians do. Their armaments are equal to ours and do not need Starlink.

Starlink is not about Russia. Starlink is about the Russian attempt to cut off communications with Ukraine, isolate them and then crush them. Russia successfully took out Inmarsat (the traditional satellite system used by civilian and military for stacoms), before the invasion. They bombarded coms lines, blew up in ground comms and destroyed both Telecoms masts and the links from the telecoms masts.

Ukraine should have been blind and cut off. But 2 days after the war they were given (not loaned like the EU), 500 satellite communications devices. This was then upped to 15,000 with additional state, company and NGO donations to buy both the devices and the usage bandwidth. This meant that the Russian attempt to cut off, then crush, the Ukrainian government and armed forces; failed.

Because of Starlink and NATO weapons the capital did not fall, the vast majority of the invasion is stalled and even in the East they are fighting a long, drawn out, close to losing, battle with the Ukrainians.

This was so critical that Russia tried to corrupt and break the Starlink network. Unfortunately for Russia they were not facing some Government supplier who changes their code once a decade and has 5 or 6 satellites in geostationary orbit, easy to jam and ridiculously easy to hack. They faced a thoroughly 21st century company with thousands of satellites in Low earth orbit and a a system which gets code changes on a weekly basis. Russia failed utterly to jam it.

I can tell you that what SpaceX did with Starlink in the face of jamming ran shockwaves through Washington and the Pentagon. As much for the fact that the US had an unhackable secure comms service they could buy into, as for the fact that their own anti satellite communication forces told them that Starlink is also secure against US attack, let alone Russian.

No major military campaign has been fought in the world without satellite communications since the 1970's. Obviously the Russians would try to remove that advantage from the Ukrainians. After all fighting a force which is reduced to WWII technology is a snap for someone using latter 20th century or 21st century technology. Just ask the Argentinians.

[Workingman]

It was Viasat that was taken out, not Inmarsat.

Now go look at a map. Russia has an 800km front from its border with eastern Ukraine all the way down to the Dnieper estuary in the Black Sea. It has resupply routes in place. It controls every inch of the coast of the Azov Sea. It largely controls the skies over the whole of Ukraine.

So, keyboard warriors, give us an explanation of how you will push Russia back to its pre 24th February 2022 borders. Will it be Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V or maybe Win-Ctrl-D to take you to another safe virtual world.

Neither the UN nor NATO are going in with troops - that would be WWIII - so all Mad Vlad has to do is sit on what he has. You hawks can foghorn and tub thump all you like, it won't make a jot of difference. Unless there is dialogue we could come back in 50 years and see today's front line has turned into a border and still be in place.

[Suff]

It was Viasat that was taken out, not Inmarsat.

Yeah OK I should have looked it up but I needed the time to work..... Good catch.

[Suff]

So, keyboard warriors, give us an explanation of how you will push Russia back to its pre 24th February 2022 borders. Will it be Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V or maybe Win-Ctrl-D to take you to another safe virtual world.

History is an interesting thing. 1942, outside Moscow, the Germans had 600,000 troops. Machine gun nests, artillery, tanks, all the tools of modern warfare. The Russians had 3m people and tanks without paint on direct from the factories. Those 3m troops ran in ranks of 3. The first rank had assault rifles, and ammo. The second and third ranks had ammo in magazines but no rifle. As the person in front of them died, they picked up the rifle and carried on. The Germans were overwhelmed and driven back away from Moscow.

If Russia has all that power, why did they fail to get to Kyiv? Why are they still stuck on the coast? Why have they stopped moving west and turned back East to try and take the Donbas region?

Russia may have all the aces in terms of equipment and firepower compared to Ukraine. But so long as Ukraine continues to get weapons from NATO and the west, Ukraine has 20m males of which, I guess, at least 10m are fighting age. How many troops does Russia have engaged? 200,000? Half a million? Ukraine has the whole population engaged on survival and the number of women signing on to fight is rising.

The only way they can lose is if they stop getting the tools to fight. Like the Leopard tanks that Spain wants to give Ukraine but Germany has to "approve" first.

[Workingman]

It's now 2022, things have changed since 1942.

We can send weapons and munitions, we cannot send troops. The West rearmament has to go through Poland with about five road routes and a couple of rail routes, then there is a 1000km overland route to resupply the Ukrainian front line. Russian cruise missiles and jets can disable the routes any time they want.

We cannot fly in these armaments because we do not control the skies. The no-fly zone was not on offer as the best military minds in NATO saw it as impossible to enforce. NATO planes and pilots v Russian planes - get real. We cannot supply by Galaxies, Starlifters. Hercules or Voyagers as the Russians would shoot them down. Nor can we supply by sea. Odesa is Ukraine's only viable port on the Black Sea, and it is blockaded.

Russia outnumbers Ukraine 10 -1 in military manpower, They can send in replacements any time they want. Ukraine cannot. The peoples of the Donbas and parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts are largely ethnic Russians. They have been involved in guerrilla tactics against the Ukraine state for decades. They are not angels, and they are not on our side.

We, the West, are hamstrung, and the Russians know it.

Dialogue is not capitulation it's the means to an end.