From Starlink To Starshield, Elon Musk Made The Ukraine War A Space War
Access to Starlink and Starshield can only take Ukraine so far. But they have helped to keep Kyiv in the fight.
In modern warfare, speed is a decisive advantage. Indeed, the faster one is when compared to their opponent on the battlefield, the greater the chance for victory. This is the essential element of John Boyd’s oft-cited OODA (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) Loop. Boyd, an Air Force fighter ace, developed his theory of modern warfare based upon his knowledge and experience in modern dogfights, where the pilot who is faster in combat than his opponent lives to fight another day.
Since Boyd first conceptualized this theory, it not only became essential teaching for future fighter pilots but was applied at the grand strategy level. Indeed, the OODA Loop has become a fashionable topic of study in the business community as much as it has been in the military. Looking at Boyd’s work and applying it to today’s conflicts of interconnected units and platforms spread out across vast and variegated battlespaces, the OODA Loop becomes more important.
How Satellites Play Into the OODA Loop
Situational awareness and clear communications also lead to the ability to interrupt your adversary’s OODA Loop process. When you disrupt that, you can break their ability to attack you. That’s why electronic warfare (EW), space warfare, and cyberwarfare are all critical aspects of modern warmaking.
These systems and capabilities allow for a modern force to fight a modern war. During the opening days of the Iraq War in 2003, the United States Navy deployed elements of the famed Seabees unit to move ahead of the main Coalition forces and attack the critical infrastructure—including communications—of major Iraqi population centers in order to isolate possible enemy fighters there.
Similarly, at the outset of the Ukraine War, Russia’s war plans called for a sweeping assault on Ukraine’s telecommunications infrastructure. The goal was to cut Ukraine off from the rest of the world, depriving Ukrainians of their ability to communicate as well as to coordinate a defense of their homeland. Very early in the war, Russia was executing this strategy with devastating results—until a fateful exchange between a Ukrainian government official and Elon Musk on Twitter.
Musk Grants Ukraine Access to Starlink
In that exchange, the Ukrainians pleaded with Musk to grant them access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network. Not intended for military use, the original goal of Starlink was to provide reliable internet to some of the hardest-to-reach parts of the world.
The satellites themselves are tiny and can be cheaply deployed. What’s more, they’re expendable. By using smaller systems that are less complicated than conventional satellites, SpaceX ensures that they can easily place these systems in orbit—at a fraction of what it costs to launch larger, conventional satellites.
Their relatively small size and simplicity means that, in order to have much-needed bandwidth, SpaceX has to place large numbers of Starlink satellites into a constellation. But that’s great, because the more Starlink satellites in a given constellation, the greater the capabilities of that network. Besides, if something were to happen to these satellites, unlike larger, expensive conventional satellites, they can easily be replaced.
By giving this capability to Ukraine as the Russian forces were advancing on all fronts at the start of the war, the Ukrainians were able to stay in the fight. Immediately, the dynamic of the war changed, because the Ukrainians were able to maintain connectivity and keep their OODA Loop going.
Recognizing the role of Starlink in Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s invasion in the early part of the war, both Russia and China began conceiving ways to disable the Starlink system. What makes the Starlink so useful is the fact that its operations are spread out across a vast constellation of satellites and are harder to take down. But the Russians and Chinese promptly went to work on countermeasures, realizing this technology represented a real danger to their militaries. Beijing crafted a laser that could cascade across the entirety of a Starlink constellation.
Musk, for his part, became wary of the Ukrainian usage of the Starlink system because that system was never intended for military use. Indeed, with the Russians and Chinese both developing countermeasures to use specifically against Starlink constellations, and with Starlink being an essential product for SpaceX, Musk could not afford to have his Starlink damaged or weakened because the Ukrainians were using Starlink for military purposes when it was intended to be a civilian program.
Enter Starshield
Instead, Musk switched the Ukrainians over to Starshield, his military equivalent of Starlink. Starshield is very much shrouded in mystery, given its classified nature. But what is known is that it takes the Starlink model and amps it up significantly to support various, sophisticated military operations. This system is designed to give the user advantages in speed in battle—the key to dominating the OODA Loop.
Customizable communications and surveillance capabilities are the crux of Starshield. Ukraine has used SpaceX products to conduct long-range drone attacks and maritime drone strikes. These systems have apparently helped Ukraine to conduct precise artillery strikes, too.
Thus, the Ukraine War is truly a space war.
Of course, access to Starlink and Starshield can only take Ukraine so far. At some point, in a war of attrition of the kind that Ukraine now finds itself in with Russia, the force that can sustain injuries and damage longer than the other wins. Starlink and Starshield cannot change that reality. But they have helped to keep Ukraine in this fight. And the experience of Ukraine in terms of using Starlink and Starshield is a dry run for what U.S. forces will do whenever the next great power war erupts.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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