Musk wants to disable Starlink in Ukraine – now the US must intervene

Immediately at the start of the war, Russia largely paralyzed the communication systems of the Ukrainian army. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service quickly became an important source of communication for Ukrainian troops on the front lines. More than 20,000 Starlink satellite units have been donated to Ukraine so far, Musk said.

This has resulted in operating expenses for his space company SpaceX of $80 million and will be over $100 million by the end of the year, tech billionaire Musk wrote. on Friday on Twitter.

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But that could soon be over. This is apparent from confidential documents held by the American broadcaster CNN. Accordingly, SpaceX warned the Pentagon in September that it could stop funding its internet service in Ukraine if the US military doesn’t contribute tens of millions of dollars a month.

“We cannot donate more terminals to Ukraine or fund the existing terminals indefinitely,” SpaceX wrote to the Pentagon. According to SpaceX, satellite internet will cost $400 million over the next 12 months.

What is behind the Starlink “donation”.

Musk and SpaceX have repeatedly offered the delivered Starlink satellite units as donations and received much praise and thanks. According to figures SpaceX shared with the Pentagon, about 85 percent of the 20,000 terminals delivered were funded in whole or in part by outside sources. Accordingly, Poland has shelled 9,000 Starlink units alone. The US, UK and NGOs also contributed to the costs.

The much more expensive part, however, is the constant connectivity, ie the data traffic via the Starlink satellites. According to CNN, the documents show that Poland and other countries so far account for about 30 percent of internet connectivity, which costs $4,500 per month per terminal, according to SpaceX.

In a letter, SpaceX asked the US Department of Defense to cover additional Starlink deliveries and $124 million in running costs for the remainder of 2022. New supplies are needed as approximately 500 Starlink terminals are destroyed each month during the war.

“The cheek to look like a hero”

SpaceX’s demand that the US military, and thus taxpayers, should pay the additional costs has been poorly received by the Pentagon. A senior Defense Department official told CNN that SpaceX “has the guts to look like a hero” when others pay that much and are now billed tens of millions a month.

According to the documents, the prices for the Starlink devices supplied and the usage costs for the Internet connection were much higher than the official prices on the Starlink website. There, the service in Ukraine costs only $ 60 per month. “That’s only 1.3 percent of the price the Pentagon has to pay, according to SpaceX,” writes CNN.

“You could say he’s trying to get money from the government or just say he doesn’t want to be involved anymore,” CNN quoted an anonymous source familiar with Musk’s Starlink transmissions as saying.

Starlink Failure Notifications

The new documents come amid recent reports of widespread Starlink outages as Ukrainian forces attempt to retake Russian-occupied territory to the east and south of the country. Musk did not deny the flights and said what happened on the battlefield was secret.

A few days ago, Musk ran into trouble with a rudimentary peace plan that would anchor Crimea in Russia and cause horror in Ukraine. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany responded with an undiplomatic “fuck off” to Musk. Asked about SpaceX’s withdrawal, Musk succinctly replies, “We’re just following his recommendation 🤷”

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