Just a few weeks after the Russian attack on Ukraine last year, Elon Musk (51) equipped the Ukrainian military with thousands of terminals for the Starlink system of his space company SpaceX. When mobile communications and the Internet failed in the course of the war of aggression in Ukraine, private satellite Internet service was literally essential for survival. Criticism and threats from the Kremlin against Musk were not long in coming.
Now SpaceX wants to prevent Ukraine from using its service for military purposes. The network supply was “never intended for use with weapons,” said Gwynne Shorwell (59), President of the aerospace company SpaceX, loudly “Wall Street Journal”
during her appearance at a space industry event on Wednesday.
According to the Terms of Service, “Starlink is not designed or intended for use with offensive or defensive weapons or any other similar end use.” Shorwell explained that SpaceX has learned about Starlink’s use in Ukraine for drones from various sources. “You offer a commercial product to connect people, which is helpful in conflict, but you also have to be careful how it’s used,” added the manager.
Russia threatened in October that it could target US commercial satellites supporting Ukraine in the war. In fact, Starlink is of great importance to the Ukrainian army. According to the military, it is planning to set up its own companies for drone attacks. These should also be equipped with Starlink terminals.
According to various reports, the Ukrainian military had recently complained about increasing problems with the system. Officers suspect that SpaceX leadership has already restricted military use of the internet from space. Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on Twitter: After a year of Ukrainian resistance, companies have to make a choice: “Either they side with Ukraine and the right to freedom and do not look for ways to cause harm .Or they side with Russia and its ‘right’ to kill and conquer territories,” Podolyak wrote.
SpaceX President Shorwell simply stated, “There are things we can do and that we have done,” but gave no details. The intervention by SpaceX could possibly be less evidence of increased caution on the part of the private satellite service and more of a clear economic calculation.
In the future, “Starshield” could bring in the money with military use
At the beginning of December, SpaceX presented “Starshield”, the military application variant of the Starlink satellites, as CNBC reported
. The December event followed nearly ten months after the US military announced it was around to spend two billion dollars for the expansion of its military satellite internet
.
The Pentagon is also one of Starshield’s first customers, for which SpaceX wants to offer everything from a single source: from the ground antenna to the satellite itself, which is transported into space with one of the company’s launch vehicles. It is quite possible that SpaceX is speculating that the Pentagon will buy the new system and then make it available to Ukraine.