clive boulton

𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗢 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗞 𝗜𝗡 𝗨𝗞𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗘 Ukraine has always used only civilian Starlink services: the basic plan ($100), the commercial in-motion plan ($400), and the priority command-post plan ($2,000–4,000). Aviation plans cost up to $1K, $20K, or $100K+, but they are unavailable in Ukraine. Under heavy demand, the network became overloaded. SpaceX had to keep prices high for the military to build excess ground-station capacity around Ukraine and minimise signal latency. These are the very sites with antenna domes that recently began to be set on fire in attacks allegedly ordered through the dark web. The main problem Ukrainian forces faced at the front was Russian electronic warfare (EW). GPS signal jamming caused civilian Starlink chips to freeze, while spoofed location data could trigger terminal lockouts. The solution was a GPS hack board. Engineers soldered it inside the terminal to manually set the desired coordinates. These boards also made it possible to bypass Musk’s geographic restrictions. For a long time, Starlink did not work in the grey zone under Russian control. But entering the coordinates of a neighbouring Ukrainian region restored the connection. Russian forces also exploited this loophole until Starlink introduced exclusive whitelists for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) only. By 2025, Musk began tightening restrictions and reducing speed limits for commercial plans. But Ukrainian military engineers discovered a loophole: technically, the satellite-terminal communication session was not rigidly tied to GPS. The protection existed only within the terminal module itself. If the terminal was made to believe through the hack board that it was stationary, it would send its own radio request to the satellite and receive the necessary session data. There are now around 10,000 satellites, and the signal could be picked up even with a separation of more than 150 km. The drone could fly over Russian territory while Starlink’s servers believed it was stationary. This was a major Ukrainian secret. Before being sent to the front, the casings of new Starlink terminals were routinely opened to install GPS hacks and sturdy, waterproof connectors. This allowed drones to fly at high speeds while using an ordinary subscription. In early 2026, Musk reduced the commercial plan’s speed limit to 160 km/h worldwide. That is slower than many basic UAVs can fly with a tailwind. But because GPS hack boards were so widely used in Ukraine, nobody noticed. The terminals reported that they were supposedly stationary. IN LATE 2026, SPACEX RESPONDED HARSHLY. A server-side check was introduced: if a terminal’s GPS indicated that it was stationary but it switched between satellites too quickly—revealing an actual speed above 160 km/h—the server would immediately terminate the connection. The GPS hack stopped working. Ukrainian forces began experiencing problems with long-range UAVs. Flights now have to be planned carefully to avoid exceeding the 160 km/h limit. Funding for aviation plans is not always available, and SpaceX does not sell them for what it considers offensive uses. Against this backdrop, Zelensky is trying to obtain unrestricted access to Starshield—the US military version of Starlink—to enable flights over Russia. But Trump, Musk and the Pentagon are refusing him. Ukraine has portrayed the restrictions as a political blockade while omitting the fact that the Starlink speed limit has reportedly been in place for almost a year. A behind-the-scenes back-and-forth is now underway: Musk says he has not changed anything in recent days, while Rubio states that Starshield is unavailable to Ukraine. The result: Starlink is gradually being restricted to vehicle-based and stationary use. The workaround no longer works. Whether the speed check has been disabled or access to specialised aviation plans has been granted remains unclear. The outage affected a narrow segment of drones...