Starlink Outage Disrupts Ukrainian Military Communications for 2.5 Hours Overnight

Starlink systems, heavily relied upon by Ukrainian military units for communications, were out of service for approximately two and a half hours during the night.

The Gaze writes on this, referring to Reuters.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces rely on thousands of SpaceX Starlink terminals for communications and drone operations, as they have proven their reliability against espionage and signal jamming since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, Starlink experienced one of its biggest international outages, affecting tens of thousands of users.

"Starlink is down across the entire front," wrote Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's drone forces, on Telegram.

Although service was restored within 2.5 hours, this incident highlighted the risk of dependence on a single system and pointed to the need to diversify communication and connection methods.

Oleksandr Dmitriev, the founder of OCHI, a Ukrainian system that centralises feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, told that relying on cloud services on a battlefield was a "huge risk".

"If connection to the internet is lost ... the ability to conduct combat operations is practically gone," he added, emphasizing the need to transition to local communication systems that are independent of the internet.

It is also reported that Moscow's troops are making extensive use of these systems on the front lines in Ukraine.

As The Gaze reported earlier, the largest mobile operator in Ukraine, Kyivstar, has started testing satellite communications for mobile phones in cooperation with global satellite internet service Starlink.