Thje Problem for Ukraine using Starlink.

There's a row going on betwwen Urkraine, Starlink, Elon Muskm and the U.S. government.

It appears Starlink is being throttled. That has a huge effect on the First Person Vision (FPV) drones that Ukraine use against Russia. Slow response means that the camera feeds from the drones are useless. A flying drone needs instantaleous video so the pilot can fly it.

So currently Ukraine cannot reliably fly it's long-range drones, instead having to rely on the relatively short range battlefield drones guided by optical cable.

No more drones targetting Russian territory, Russian refineries, fuel dumps, or airfields.

Now the blame is being bounced between Elon Musk, who says the throttling must be governental. The U.S, government laying the blame on Elon.

I'll go into the whys and wherefores of the throttling in a minute, but let's look at where Ukraine is at the moment. They military is relying on a satellite network owned by a private company based in a completely different country. This is not a military-grade asset. I'll sure Starlink the company has decent security, but it never will be the highest of the high. It is not protected by an official secrets act, backed by the full force of the government for instance. It doesn't have NSA-level encryption.

So Russia themselves could have hacked the Starlink network.

Russia themselves have military-grade assets in space. They have tested satellite killer satellites. It could have been a call from a Russian asset to Starlink to warn them that if they keep up supplying hight speed internet to Ukraine, they will be targetted. Unless they start making Starlink unable to support long distance real time video, then they may find the Starlink network turning into a shell of high speed dust around the planet.

The U.S government or Trump himself may have thought himself slighted by Ukraine during the several attempts to creat a peace deal. A number of times we've been told it is close, only for it to fall down. Trump himself could have ordered the slowdown, in an effort to make Ukraine see reason and settle for peace. 

Who knows. But I do know that a military force in the middle of a war relying on civillian assets controlled from a thrid country is buikding on foundations of sand. Never have your military rely on assets it cannot itself control. 

By all means use it, but don't rely on it.

But for now, the Ukraine military needs to restrict their ambitions. The weak point in their ambition has been exposed.