Ukraine tried for the first time to use uncrewed surface vessels against Russian vessels in Sevastopol Bay in September 2022, but 70 kilometres from the target, the connection with billionaire Elon Musk�s Starlinks was lost. It was not possible to persuade Musk to turn back on the connection, so Ukraine modified the drones.
No, their first mistake was launching a military operation that depended on Starlink connectivity to a region that they knew was already cut off from Starlink due to sanctions on Russia on the assumption that they’d be able to convince an American company to turn it on for them in the middle of the attack, thus violating some very serious American laws preventing that sort of thing from happening.
I know the overwhelming narrative on the Internet is “Ukraine good, Elon bad”, but in this case it really seems to me like the screwup was on Ukraine’s side here.
I always got the sense from the story that Ukraine didn’t know it wasn’t going to work in Crimea. When they realized, they begged him to turn it back on, because they thought he turned it off.
But it was never on and he refused to turn it on.
They also knew they weren’t allowed to use it that way and tried anyway.
If they hadn’t known that it wasn’t on then that would be a pretty big part of the screwup, I’m sure Starlink wasn’t keeping it a secret that there was no service there.
Given the urgency of the request makes me think they didn’t know.
I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a reliable answer on if they knew or didn’t though
Edit: E.g they’ve never admitted to a successful use in the region prior to that event to indicate it was actually on or attempted before.
Edit: I think they were also told it’d work in Ukraine, but maybe unknown to them that didn’t include Russia controlled areas. I can see the mistake happening
No, their first mistake was launching a military operation that depended on Starlink connectivity to a region that they knew was already cut off from Starlink due to sanctions on Russia on the assumption that they’d be able to convince an American company to turn it on for them in the middle of the attack, thus violating some very serious American laws preventing that sort of thing from happening.
I know the overwhelming narrative on the Internet is “Ukraine good, Elon bad”, but in this case it really seems to me like the screwup was on Ukraine’s side here.
I always got the sense from the story that Ukraine didn’t know it wasn’t going to work in Crimea. When they realized, they begged him to turn it back on, because they thought he turned it off.
But it was never on and he refused to turn it on.
They also knew they weren’t allowed to use it that way and tried anyway.
If they hadn’t known that it wasn’t on then that would be a pretty big part of the screwup, I’m sure Starlink wasn’t keeping it a secret that there was no service there.
Given the urgency of the request makes me think they didn’t know.
I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a reliable answer on if they knew or didn’t though
Edit: E.g they’ve never admitted to a successful use in the region prior to that event to indicate it was actually on or attempted before.
Edit: I think they were also told it’d work in Ukraine, but maybe unknown to them that didn’t include Russia controlled areas. I can see the mistake happening