March 29, 2026: Currently there are about 200,000 Starlink units in use by the Ukrainian armed forces, although some have been diverted for use by commercial and government enterprises. Russia has, over the last few years acquired several thousand Starlink terminals via black market sources. On February 4 ^th Russian troops found that their Starlink terminals no longer worked. SpaceX, the operator of the satellite network that makes Starlink terminals work, had identified Starlink units used by Russian troops and shut off access. This not only shut down communication services, but also the use of Starlink to operate Russian drones. There was one problem, the Ukrainian use of Starlink to guide its drones to targets in Russian territory. A solution to this problem is underway. Meanwhile Ukraine can use GPS and several other methods to operate drones attacking targets in Russia.

When Russian troops found they had lost access to Starlink, they knew they were in trouble. Russian troops never had effective military radios, something that was first noted during the 2022 invasion. Corrupt procurement officers had stolen most of the money allocated to purchase new radios for Russian troops. This scam was not discovered until the invading Russians found that their military radios didn’t work well, if at all inside Ukraine. That problem was eventually solved by obtaining some modern radios and Starlink terminals. Since February the Russians have been improvising.

Ukrainian forces have been supplied with SpaceX Starlink satellite communication terminals since the beginning of the Russian invasion. SpaceX allowed Ukrainian forces to use Starlink terminals free of charge and as of 2024 about 10,000 Starlink terminals are used in Ukraine by the military, government and some commercial enterprises.

SpaceX has kept Starlink operational over Ukraine since the war began in early 2022. This includes paying for rapid patches to defeat Russian EW electronic Warfare attacks and providing many Ukrainian users with the highest and most expensive level of service. This has cost SpaceX over $100 million. Maintaining the level of Starlink service Ukraine demands to maintain its communications advantage over Russia keeps growing. Both Russia and China have been seeking ways to disrupt or shut down Starlink over Ukraine.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted SpaceX for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. Starlink officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. SpaceX agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits SpaceX sent to Ukraine. SpaceX ultimately supplied Ukraine with nearly 2,000 terminals and managed to persuade countries supplying military aid for Ukraine to include Ukrainian requests for more Starlink terminals, especially the more expensive, and capable commercial models. In this way Ukraine was able to obtain over 40,000 terminals so far. Most of these are used to keep the economy going and the ones used by the military are subject to combat losses. Civilian users face a similar but lesser risk and about 500 terminals a month are lost to Russian attacks. These have to be replaced and most, if not all, of the replacements are paid for by military aid for Ukraine. The Starlink replacement terminals cost about a million dollars a month.

Early in the war American defense officials admitted that if the Starlink satellite internet service were government run, it would not have remained operational over Ukraine because government regulations do not allow for the quick responses Starlink management used to defeat Russian electronic attacks and keep Starlink operational in Ukraine.

SpaceX, the American firm that designed, built and put the Starlink satellites into orbit, accomplished this by encouraging innovation and acting quickly to deal with service interruptions, including deliberate efforts by hackers or hostile governments. By April 2022 about 20 percent of the initially planned Starlink global network satellites were in orbit. More satellites had to be put into orbit to provide the enormous demand Ukrainian military and civilian users were creating. Before 2022 Starlink was turned on over a few areas so reviewers and other volunteer users could test the system.

By February 2022 Starlink appeared to be a success but the network also displayed a remarkable resistance to attacks from hostile governments, and the Russians were the first ones coming after it with major jamming efforts and threats to destroy Starlink satellites over Ukraine. SpaceX pointed out that it could put additional Starlink satellites into orbit faster and far less expensively than Russia or anyone else could destroy them. This capability was part of the Starlink design that not only allowed satellite and user software to be quickly updated but new Starlink satellites often had new features added to improve performance and that included more resistance to hacking and jamming.

Starlink satellites are designed to last for up to seven years and the Starlink system is designed to expand to over 30,000 satellites if demand by paying customers is large enough to justify and pay for it. That is being tested by the heavy use of the Starlink satellites over Ukraine by Ukrainians who don’t have to pay the usual one time $500 startup or and $99 monthly fees. This serves as a test of how much heavy use each satellite can handle, especially when constantly subject to heavy Russian hacking and jamming efforts. This got a lot more expensive as Starlink introduced its more capable, and expensive, commercial and military grade terminals.

Russia did seek to sever the fiber optic cables that connect Ukraine to the global Internet and generally try to disrupt Internet service inside Ukraine. Starlink made this effort futile and Starlink became the first satellite communications service that could be described as combat tested. This is always a major selling point for military equipment, or anything built to that is built to survive in a harsh environment. Starlink expected many emergency relief organizations will maintain Starlink accounts that could be taken into disaster areas where most communications were disabled. Starlink terminals can be linked to local networks and supply Internet service for locals and emergency workers.

Starlink resistance to hackers and jamming was quickly put to the test as Russia came after it several times in the first two months of the war, failing in each attempt because Starlink engineers could diagnose an attack, develop a software patch and implement it quickly, often in less than an hour. Starlink also responded by modifying the design of newly manufactured Starlink satellites to resist efforts to disrupt service.

The Ukrainians were equally innovative in finding new ways to use Starlink in combat. One example was using Starlink to support attacks on Russian supply lines day and night. The night attacks were effective because of the use of small Ukrainian designed drones equipped with GPS, a night vision camera, a laser range finder and a link to a nearby artillery unit via Starlink. The drone patrolled Russian supply routes at night and, when a convoy was spotted trying to move safely in the dark, the artillery unit had the continually updated location of the trucks. That enabled the Ukrainians to fire at the convoy and destroy many of the vehicles while demoralizing the survivors who didn’t believe the Ukrainians could detect them in the dark and call-in accurate artillery fire.

Similar innovations were developed to provide Ukrainian military units with better communications than the Russian invaders. That edge has been maintained and expanded even though Russians, now the Chinese, continue trying to disrupt Starlink service or find ways to locate active terminals quickly and target them for air or artillery attack.