r/worldnews • u/Not_Tom_Jones • 3d ago

Russia/Ukraine 'This cannot be a coincidence' — Ukraine's Starlink access restricted without warning, Zelensky adviser says

https://kyivindependent.com/this-cannot-be-a-coincidence-ukraines-starlink-access-restricted-without-warning-zelensky-adviser-says/
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187

u/Jet2work 3d ago

europe needs a starlink equivalent

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 3d ago

ASTS is the solution, their satellites respect data privacy and are much faster than the Starlink Mobile ones. They also need magnitudes less satellites than Starlink Mobile to offer better service (less than 200 would cover the majority of the world's countries twice, vs the needed thousands for Starlink Mobile)

In fact, Europe is already negotiating buying a whole sovereign constellation from them.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/asts-stock-eyes-best-month-052554809.html

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u/yoomiii 3d ago

how is their ping? can imagine drone piloting would be increasingly difficult with higher pings.

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u/Writer13377 3d ago

The era of small, wireless drones is effectively dead anyways, at least on the frontline, so it’s a moot point. Go look up some of the truly horrifying pictures of fibre optic spider webs across the tree lines

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u/tenuousemphasis 3d ago

The (scary) end game to this arms race is autonomous drones that don't need a remote link at all. Send them to a location, they take off and find their own targets.

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 3d ago

I actually don't know what their ping is, but I can't imagine it being worst than Starlink Mobile's

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u/BadVoices 3d ago

AST doesnt do satellite to satellite communications.. at all. It's 'Bent Pipe' and requires a ground station in view, at all times, to deliver connectivity. A targeted attack on a handful of stations could blackout a region or continent. AST also is extra vulnerable to downlink jamming. Less satellites to track and jam, makes it fairly straightforward for any unit on the ground within hundreds of miles to track an AST satellite (or, indeed, most of the constellation) and attack its downlink radio.

Starlink is specifically extra resilient against this because of their somewhat silly seeming space laser inter satellite link. You have to jam dozens of starlink satellites at the same time, and you cant target their downlink, you have to target every single phased array aiming point. Starlink ground terminal beams on their satellites are very narrow, 15 miles wide. So you can jam an area 15 miles across, but you need enough jammers to... jam every 15 mile wide beam. China's estimates to block starlink over Taiwan required 935 synchronized airborne jamming drones, before it was hardened. Russia is generally considered quite good at EW. Their 1.5 million dollars per unit Volna Kupol Garant system can only temporarily disrupt starlink in a 20 sqkm area. And its worse with the monster V3 satellites that have 10x the radio power.

There is a reason every other country is doing what they can to emulate and build their own starlinks, and why Ukraine desperately wants it. This is one of the reasons.

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 3d ago

It is sad that all that ingenuity is controlled by nazi Elon, I am eager to see countries and MNOs drop them as soon as other options become viable

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u/Beginning-Can-2188 3d ago

Bro spreading the word for the spacemob 🤣

Just one thing though. Europe is not negotiating with ASTS to buy a sovereign constellation from them. I think you are confused by the joint ASTS and Vodafone initiative to eradicate European security concerns.

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u/geckospots 3d ago

Is that the same constellation that I feel like Canada was part of discussions about? There is just so much news rn I can’t keep track but I feel like this came up in the last couple of months.

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 3d ago

I don't know, but it sounds like maybe? I do know ASTS already has partnerships with Telus and Bell

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u/SportsGuru4714 2d ago

There is no European equivalent to Starlink. The same is true for the rest of the world. Starlink has over 10,000 satellites in orbit. Its bandwidth, ping/latency, and coverage is unmatched.

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 2d ago

Okok, ty for opening my eyes lol

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u/Tangolarango 3d ago

this example should be used whenever people point to the fear of a "kill switch" or similar as alarmist, in the context of buying american equipments for defence

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u/SilviuCT 3d ago

There's eutel sat, and iris 2 will be operational in a year.

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u/xPelzviehx 3d ago

German military plans to field a constellation of 1200 satellites for communication and surveillance. Current plan is to invest 30 billion € into military satellites until 2030.

News like OP and the plan of a German "Starlink" show that Starlink is not just for internet but for surveillance.

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u/-Bento-Oreo- 3d ago

Which is why Musk is such an idiot. There's no walled Garden with what starlink does. Any government agency can do it. They just don't want to spend the resources. But something like this forces them to

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u/UnusualFunction7567 3d ago

There are a lot of things that Europe lacks.

They have military equipment, but it’s questionable whether they’d have the manpower to effectively use them if a large scale war broke out.

The US, on the other hand has a powerful military but lacks the social safety net that Europe has.   Seems there could be a better balance struck if allies could work together and collectively fill the gaps.

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u/perie2004 3d ago

EU has ALOT more soldiers than US, much larger reserve aswell.

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u/PuzzleCat365 3d ago

What are you talking about? The EU has a population of ~450 million and about 1.5 million soldiers, 3 times more soldiers than the US.

We lack the equipment, not the people.

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u/-Hntz 3d ago

I think Nokia just announced they have been developing one for defence purposes. Might take a while to get those satellites in the sky, though.

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u/Phos-Lux 3d ago

Didn't Eutelsat try to start something in that regard?

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u/vauvva 3d ago

It’s not that simple bud

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u/aleqqqs 3d ago

What's not simple about it?

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u/Weak-Ad-6955 3d ago

The technology is really hard to develop and there is only really 2 companies that have the tech and IP to be able to manufacture them

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/NotEvilCaster 3d ago

What else they should detonate in the ionosphere? And since other countries have much higher capabilities in launching things into space, how exactly it helps Europe?

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u/Lraund 3d ago

No, Starlink and equivalents need to be banned, the pollution from de-orbitting is going to destroy our upper atmosphere apparently.