cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/12200184

Ukrainian arms manufacturer Fire Point has found ways to carry out long-range strikes in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine without relying on SpaceX satellite services, its chief executive told Reuters.

CEO Iryna Terekh also said a new tactical ballistic missile developed by Fire Point could help boost the protection of Ukrainian cities, which have been pounded by Russian forces as Ukraine's air defences run low.

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"We have built with this in mind. Fire Point systems are designed to finish a mission without a satellite link," she said, discussing the recent SpaceX restrictions. "Navigation that works without any external signal is a priority."

She declined to give details of the workarounds but made clear that having full access to the SpaceX systems over Russia would be a significantly boost.

"We found a way to technologically overcome this challenge, but this only covers probably 15 to 20% of what we could do if the Starlink was working (over Russia)," she said in an interview during a visit to London this month.

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In the 10 days when SpaceX's satellite connectivity services were restricted, Ukrainian drones lost connection with those services when flying at over 100 miles (160 km) an hour.

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[–] 6 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I have a genuine question if someone would take the time to answer.

Starlink was throttled. And it seems like musk and trump did it deliberately. So is it not a risk that starlink is being used to spy on the ukrainians on behalf of Russia?

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago

    It is definitely not just a risk, and is likely already taking place. I remember reading about Ukraine and the EU diversifying away from American intelligence a year or two ago, after Trump had already cut them off a couple of times.

    Ukraine is well aware they can't trust the American nazis at this point, so I imagine they're doing constant analysis, A/B testing of intelligence sharing etc, to limit the threat and damage.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Main risk would be exposing the location of starlink terminals - the traffic itself will be encrypted to hell and back - and it would be pretty obvious if russian drones and ballistics started homing in on those. So I don't think they went that far (yet), but UA will have had that thought too, and especially sensitive missions will probably be conducted without StarLink.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    Everything should be conducted without Starlink. 💁🏼‍♂️

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    It was the fastest fix for the air defense situation (and the US wasn't hostile) at that point in time. But I am sure that the moment they saw Trump coming in, they started isolating their offensive operations from Starlink (which doesn't work over russian territory anyway).

    That these traitors would go so far to diminish defensive operations was probably not expected.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    They throttled Starlink to curb Ukrainian strikes on Russian petroleum infrastructure. This is because Trump wants oil prices to come down for his own political benefit. That's it. That's the explanation.

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  • Share them with the people! Let's help make sure Starlink, et al, is DOA before the noose it hides tightens around the species. 🙇🏼‍♂️

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