Russia determined to jam Starlink on battlefield, report says
Russia’s quest to sabotage Ukrainian forces’ internet access by targeting the Starlink satellite operations that billionaire Elon Musk has provided to Kyiv since the war’s earliest days appears to be more advanced than previously known, according to a classified U.S. intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post.
Moscow has experimented for months with its Tobol electronic warfare systems in a bid to disrupt Starlink’s transmissions in Ukraine, the top-secret assessment, which has not been previously disclosed, contends.
The document, among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord, dates to March and does not indicate whether any of Russia’s tests have been successful. But the intelligence finding is striking nonetheless as it appears to affirm what observers had only hypothesized previously: that a program ostensibly designed to protect the Kremlin’s satellites can be employed instead to attack those used by its adversaries.
SpaceX, the firm that owns Starlink, declined to comment. Last spring, Musk briefly addressed the Kremlin’s attempts to target the technology, writing on Twitter in May that while Starlink had demonstrated its resilience against such “jamming & hacking” attempts, the Russians appeared to be intensifying their efforts.
The Pentagon did not address questions about the leaked assessment.
“These systems constitute an important layer in Ukraine’s communications network,” said Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Defense Department spokesman. The department’s focus, he added, “remains on getting the Ukrainians the satellite capabilities they need.”
Kostiantyn Zhura, a spokesman for the Ukrainian defense ministry, said that officials in Kyiv are aware of Russia’s efforts and “taking measures to neutralize them.” The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Starlink has proved vital to Ukraine’s military, which relies on the small portable terminals to communicate across the battlefield and relay intelligence.
Russian forces have had success disabling the Ukrainians’ ability to use other communications equipment, including radios and cellphones, but the satellite signals are harder to disrupt.
Last fall, Musk faced backlash from Ukrainian leaders after putting forward a plan to end the war that critics deemed overly favorable to Russia. Weeks later, the business mogul was criticized again when he threatened to halt funding for the emergency Starlink service. The blowback caused him to quickly reverse course.
It is unclear if Starlink outages that have been reported in Ukraine were the result of Russia’s Tobol experiments or other jamming capabilities used by Russian forces, such as the truck-mounted Tirada-2 system. Ukrainian troops reported having experienced disruptions in October, as they moved toward Russian positions during successful counteroffensives in the south and east. Ukrainian officials suggested at that time that SpaceX had restricted internet access in those areas to prevent the Russians from using the service, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Analysts have identified at least seven Tobol complexes in Russia, all of which are located next to facilities used to track satellites, according to a report released this month by Secure World Foundation, a privately funded group focused on space security and sustainability. Some of the sites are headquarters for mobile jammers, analysts said.
Satellite interference can happen in two places: in space, by targeting the satellites directly, and on the ground, where weapons can target receivers, according to the Secure World Foundation.
The interference that happens in space, what’s known as uplink jamming, blends a signal with the original broadcast, which distorts the information all users of that satellite receive.
Tobol almost certainly works in this way, according to Bart Hendrickx, a researcher who has followed the program closely.
The ground-based method, known as downlink jamming, transmits a signal on the same frequency as the satellite, which prevents connected devices from receiving the legitimate signal. That method has a smaller area of effect because it depends on a jammer getting relatively close to systems it intends to disrupt.