MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/. SpaceX deliberately ignores Ukraine’s use of Starlink terminals for unmanned strikes deep in Russia making Elon Musk’s satellites legitimate military targets, Dmitry Kuzyakin, an expert in unmanned aircraft and chief designer at the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions, told TASS.
"In some countries, the network is blocked altogether, such as in China or Russia. However, the company's prohibitions are easily circumvented: if the user terminal informs the system that it is located, for example, in Germany, but actually operates near Voronezh, the Starlink network can continue servicing. This technical nuance is used by the armed forces of Ukraine when they install ‘dishes’ on drones for strikes deep into the territory of our country. To do this, they embed a digital shunt into a Starlink plate, which physically replaces the real coordinates of the plate with deliberately false ones. It is not difficult to uncover the substitution, and the SpaceX administration has such information," the expert said.
Kuzyakin noted that the network is able to identify the discrepancy and stop transmitting data in such conditions.
"However, the corporation's management deliberately ignores the problem for the sake of political dividends and enormous financial benefits from equipment sales. After all, attack drones fly every day and many of them have Starlink plates. Such a policy puts Elon Musk's satellites in the category of legitimate military targets, since the company deliberately ensures the operation of hacked terminals to attack our facilities," he said.
Kuzyakin added that the Central Design Bureau had already accumulated dozens of captured Ukrainian drones with Starlink dishes with coordinate substitution shunts embedded in their control boards in a barbaric way.