Re: [Starlink] spacex & ukraine

[Nathan Owens <nathan@nathan.io>]

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They did enable mobile roaming in UA:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499442132402130951

On Thu, Mar 3, 2022 at 2:01 PM Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu> wrote:

> > The balance, as David mentions, is on the value of the target vs. the
> effort required to strike.
>
> The value of allowing government and resistance leaders and journalists to
> communicate with each other and the outside world seems quite high, making
> the terminals attractive targets for the Russians.
>
> The cost of locating and striking a target also seems high -- Ukraine is
> large and the terminals are portable. SpaceX is testing roaming without
> re-registration in California/Nevada (
> https://circleid.com/posts/20220225-spacex-is-testing-starlink-roaming).
> If SpaceX is listening -- consider enabling roaming in by the users in
> Ukraine.
>
> Larry
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of
> Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 2, 2022 1:06 AM
> *To:* Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>; David Lang <david@lang.hm>
> *Cc:* starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> *Subject:* Re: [Starlink] spacex & ukraine
>
> Thank you Dave, the honor is mine to share a mailing list with so many
> people who know way more than I do, about any subject I could point my
> finger at, so I really appreciate it.
>
> On the subject at hand, ELINT/SIGINT and traffic analysis has evolved
> massively over the years. In the mid-90s, the Chechen president was killed
> by Russia with a missile strike, based on his satcom phone signals, which
> included decoding the speech and matching to ensure they were hitting the
> right target.
>
> The balance, as David mentions, is on the value of the target vs. the
> effort required to strike. It is relatively easy to monitor cellular
> networks, decrypt the traffic, and triangulate to almost automatically
> target & strike. The same happens with VSAT, which operates against a fixed
> satellite, so an aircraft high enough will be in the path between a large
> portion of the ground and the satellite.
>
> With Starlink, the challenge is two-fold. You must be able to detect &
> locate the 4.5º wide uplink beam from a terminal, which constantly moves -
> this can be done by measuring just the RF levels and using an ESA to find
> the source. You must also ensure that the user of the terminal is a target
> valuable enough to justify a strike, which would be a lot harder, as you
> need to keep a good enough SNR to demodulate, then you’d need to decrypt.
> Doing this in real time on an airborne platform is quite a challenge.
>
> Bottom line: unless Russia goes all-out against anyone using any form of
> radio comms (phones, VSAT, satcom, Starlink, etc.) and they just blindly
> strike any source of RF, a Starlink user has a good chance to avoid being
> targeted by just using the terminal. Different case is if terminals get
> used by the military, and Russia then assumes Starlink = military target.
> We’re far from any clear scenario, so we need to wait & see.
>
> A couple of weeks ago I sent a Ku band LNB to Oleg, tuned to the Starlink
> uplink band (12.75 - 14.5 GHz), but it arrived a couple of days before the
> invasion began, so he didn’t get a chance to do any analysis on the TX side
> of the terminal.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Mar 1, 2022, 22:15 +0300, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
>
> a couple thoughts on anti-radiation missiles being fired at starlink dishes
>
> 1. the dishes are fairly low power (100w or less) and rather directional,
> so
> they aren't great targets.
>
> 2. dishes cost FAR less than the missiles that would be fired at them, and
> are
> being produced at a much higher rate (although there are probably more
> missles
> in the Russian inventory than spare dishes in SpaceX inventory)
>
> direction finding teams with boots on the ground could be more of a
> threat, but
> the higher frequency signals are blocked fairly easily (which is why the
> dishes
> need a clear view of the sky). It takes a fair amount of training to be
> good at
> direction finding on weak and intermittent signals.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Tue, 1 Mar 2022, Dave Taht wrote:
>
> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2022 13:55:47 -0500
> From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: [Starlink] spacex & ukraine
>
> It is an ongoing honor to have mike puchol sharing his insights with
> us, also, on this list.
>
> https://spacenews.com/spacex-heeds-ukraines-starlink-sos/
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>
> --
> I tried to build a better future, a few times:
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>
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
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