Starlink's critical role in Ukraine and Russia's unusual countermeasures

Starlink – the satellite internet provided by Elon Musk's company – is as crucial to Ukrainians as weapons. Communication, which is difficult to disrupt and intercept, is used by Ukraine and is a thorn in the side of the Russians. Therefore, they have proposed an unusual way to deactivate Starlink.

Starlink is one of the pillars of effective resistance that Ukrainian soldiers have been putting up against Russian aggressors for over two years. At the beginning of the conflict, nearly 10,000 terminals arrived in Ukraine, half financed, and their operation was paid for by the Polish company Orlen.

Thanks to Starlink terminals, access to the Internet is possible even in complete wilderness. According to the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, Starlink has become a critical communication infrastructure.

From the beginning of the conflict, the Russians (who also use Starlink) have been trying to disrupt this service. Though possible, the area of interference is small.

For this reason, the Russians recently presented an unusual idea to effectively "turn off" satellite internet over a large area. They want to use balloons for this purpose, which is more extensively introduced in a paper published by the Russian Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk.

According to the Russians, the jamming of satellite signals used so far is ineffective, and with the growing Starlink constellation, it is increasingly difficult. Therefore, the solution is to disrupt the operation of the terminals.

This is supposed to be possible using spherical balloons as passive radio reflectors – to reflect and evenly, omnidirectionally distribute the signal transmitted from below by the jammer.

The Russians suggest that using a balloon with a diameter of around 10 metres and placing it at a height of about 300 metres, a jammer with a power of about 150 W would disable Starlink within a radius of 5 kilometres. The jamming system should be light and small enough to fit on a pickup truck.

It is worth noting that the idea – regardless of its effectiveness – is only a proposal at this stage. Moreover, the Russians realised that a balloon would not last long in a combat environment, so they proposed using this solution not on the front lines but to secure the rear of the fighting units.