When I asked colleagues in Ukraine how serious the latest restrictions on Starlink were, their response was measured. Tactical and operational missions would face difficulties, they said, but the country’s deep-strike operations would not be affected in the same way. Later on 14 October, Mykhailo Fedorov announced that connectivity was being restored for equipment travelling at up to 160 kilometres per hour. Strike and interceptor drones could fly again within that limit, but the next task was to lift the restrictions on Starshield, SpaceX’s military-focused satellite service, altogether.
The restrictions had interrupted some Ukrainian drone missions, with the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps reporting disconnections lasting 10–20 seconds, occasionally below the stated speed threshold. The timing, incidentally, was politically sensitive. Donald Trump had been pressing Kyiv to stop attacking Russian oil infrastructure, and Ukrainian officials questioned whether the communications restrictions were linked to that pressure. There is no public proof that Trump had ordered them and Musk, for his part, said the military network was under US government control, not his. Who then authorised the change remains unclear. The interruption was partly reversed within hours, but that speed of reversal only sharpened the issue: somebody outside the Ukrainian chain of command could modify access to a battlefield communications service at short notice.
This uncertainty is a significant issue because Ukraine’s military cooperation with the United States is taking place against an increasingly unsettled political relationship. The issue is not simply whether a particular drone can fly at a particular speed. It is whether a country can count on communications essential to military operations when the provider, operator and political authority are outside its command chain.
Why Starlink changed the battlefield
Armies fought wars long before Starlink, using radio, cables, field telephones, relays and military satellites. Starlink did not invent battlefield communication. It made relatively fast broadband available through portable terminals connected to thousands of low-Earth-orbit satellites, including regions where ground infrastructure had been destroyed. Its low latency means that video, coordinates and instructions can move quickly enough to influence decisions during an engagement. The difference is particularly pronounced for mobile groups scattered across a vast front, where laying fresh fibre or protecting fixed communications nodes can be dangerous and slow. While portable terminals are far from invulnerable, an operator can establish or relocate a connection without constructing from scratch a conventional military telecommunications site.
It is equally important to note that Starlink is not GPS. GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou and India’s NavIC help determine position and time. They do not carry the two-way broadband traffic needed to share live drone feeds or sustain a remote operator’s connection. Starlink provides a communications link; navigation satellites perform another job. A long-range drone flying a pre-programmed route may rely primarily on navigation, inertial sensors and on-board autonomy, while a drone controlled through live video needs a usable communications link. That distinction helps explain why the latest restrictions did not have the same impact on every class of Ukrainian weapon.
For example, take a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone that spots a Russian gun position. Its images and coordinates reach a command post, which checks the information and passes it to an artillery battery or a strike-drone team. Ukraine’s DELTA system helps combine sensor reports into a shared picture; satellite broadband can carry those reports between widely dispersed users. Neither DELTA nor Starlink alone produces the desired result. Their value lies in how they work together. That helped Ukraine coordinate small units and shorten the time between detecting a target and engaging it, an advantage Russian formations initially struggled to match. The system also distributes decision-making: frontline teams can send information upward without waiting for a single large HQ to collect it, while commanders can see reports from multiple points along the front.
But this access came with conditions. SpaceX acknowledged restrictions on some offensive drone uses in 2023. A 2025 investigation alleged that Musk had ordered a Starlink coverage shutdown during Ukraine’s 2022 Kherson counteroffensive; SpaceX disputed that account. Earlier, Russia’s February 2022 attack on Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite network had already shown how quickly communications themselves could become a target of war. Starshield, meanwhile, is marketed for national-security uses, including secure communications and specialised government payloads. The US and, reportedly, the UK have procured Starshield services. The central problem remains: owning weapons does not mean controlling the chain of links that makes them useful.,
Europe pays, but cannot yet replace the network
Nor is Ukraine simply receiving Starlink as a gift. Poland spent approximately US$84 million between 2022 and 2024 on more than 24,500 terminals and subscriptions, and financed another 5,000 terminals for delivery in 2025. That helps explain Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski’s objections to the latest restrictions: European governments foot the bill for a service whose military operating conditions they cannot necessarily determine.
Europe has assumed more of the financial burden of Ukraine’s defence, including through the EU’s €90 billion support-loan framework for 2026–27. Yet financing equipment is not the same as controlling the infrastructure it needs. Eutelsat’s OneWeb network offers an alternative, but its constellation, terminals and service arrangements cannot replace Starlink at the scale Ukraine needs overnight. The EU’s IRIS² secure-connectivity project is intended to reduce such dependence, but its first launches are planned for 2029. By bankrolling Starlink services to Ukraine, Europe is actually buying time.
Russia’s Starlink answer, built with Chinese inputs
Russia’s early battlefield communications were uneven. It has since adapted through EW, relays, commercial radios and fibre-optic drones, whose physical control cables resist conventional radio-frequency jamming. None supplies the wide-area satellite broadband Moscow has lacked. Its proposed answer is Rassvet, a low-Earth-orbit constellation developed by Bureau 1440, part of X Holding.
Russia launched 16 production-series Rassvet satellites in March 2026 and another 16 in July, against an ambition of roughly 292 by 2027 and more than 900 in the longer term. The gap between promise and performance remains considerable. Independent tracking reported probable failures among the first 32 spacecraft. Tests and a small network do not amount to uninterrupted battlefield coverage, and sanctions, component shortages and budget pressure complicate the programme. There is no clear public accounting of the effect of budget cuts on Rassvet. Plans for hundreds of satellites are only useful if Russia can manufacture them consistently, launch replacements as spacecraft fail, and equip troops with functioning ground terminals. A functioning service requires an entire ecosystem; satellites alone cannot provide it.
There is a more revealing story on how Russia is sourcing the technology despite sanctions. An investigation by Ukraine’s Centre for Defence Reforms, reported by RBC-Ukraine, traced more than 1,300 companies in Bureau 1440’s supply network. It reported nearly $68 million in foreign-currency payments for imported goods in 2025; some suppliers obtained over 90% of their imports from China. Western-origin test and measurement equipment associated with Rohde & Schwarz, Keysight and TOPTICA was also reported to be entering through suppliers in China and Türkiye. This is a striking example of resilience against sanctions by rerouting procurement instead of stopping it altogether. Imported components, both Chinese and western, can pass through third party civilian distributors before reaching Russian satellite manufacturers.
The investigation identified a concrete component: SMA-D-6 reaction wheels made by Shanghai Modern Aerotech and imported through the Russian intermediary Materik. Such wheels orient satellites so that antennas and solar panels point correctly. Bureau 1440 reportedly made $1.42 million in payments to Materik. Even if information on this remains scattered, the example shows how deeply Chinese suppliers are becoming embedded in a supposedly sovereign Russian space programme. The evidence is of an industrial dependence that sanctions have intensified. This unsettles Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s 3 October request for US sanctions on Russian and Chinese companies associated with Rassvet shows why Kyiv is watching closely: a working Russian broadband constellation could improve the coordination of Russian drones and dispersed forces. Russia is trying to escape an American communications disadvantage with increasing help from Chinese supply chains. But this alone does not explain the enormity of Chinese aspirations.
Also read: Why Starlink’s India troubles signal the next big battle for space internet
China, Pakistan and India’s connected battlefield
Beijing’s own ambitions are larger. Its Guowang and Qianfan, or SpaceSail, projects envisage constellations of roughly 13,000 and more than 15,000 satellites respectively, although their current deployment remains far from those targets for now. China and Russia also agreed in May 2026 to pursue a 2026-30 roadmap linking cooperation between BeiDou and GLONASS. That is navigation and timing, not Starlink-style broadband; but both layers, however, have immediate relevance to networked military operations. China’s own investment predates Ukraine and is not merely an imitation of Starlink. A commercial network that can connect ships, aircraft, remote installations and data centres also creates infrastructure with potential military value and it is particularly true in China’s case. The public record may or may not show that its planned satellite networks aspire to perform the same battlefield functions at Starlink’s present scale but drawing inferences from official statements is not the point.
Pakistan is another reason India should pay attention. China helped develop and launch Pakistan’s PakSat-MM1 communications satellite in 2024 and has supported its remote-sensing programmes.
Their potential military value lies in connecting satellite communications and imagery with airborne surveillance, tactical data links and weapons. ORF research drawing on Brigadier Anshuman Narang’s work on the PLA’s Western Theatre Command underscores the growing importance of such links, although the degree of Chinese-Pakistani operational integration is not publicly established. That qualification tells us that receiving a Chinese satellite or buying imagery is not the same as having a secure, low-latency network linking every sensor to an air-defence battery or aircraft. Yet sustained Chinese assistance gives Pakistan opportunities to develop parts of such an architecture.,
India has its own building blocks. CMS-03, also called GSAT-7R, was launched in November 2025 to support naval communications; the Army contracted for GSAT-7B in 2023. Remember that communications satellites should not be confused with navigation. In July 2026 the government acknowledged that NavIC could no longer provide standalone positioning, with too few positioning satellites functioning; but its timing service continued. For now, the armed forces use multi-constellation navigation.
The real test is whether India can connect these pieces reliably. SANJAY combines inputs from ground and aerial sensors into a battlefield surveillance picture using secure data and satellite networks. Akashteer connects elements of air-defence detection, tracking and engagement. Their performance together under electronic warfare, cyberattack or lost satellite links deserves rigorous testing, not merely assumptions based on the induction of individual systems. A sophisticated common picture is of little use if the report from a distant sensor cannot reach the decision-maker, or if a weapon cannot receive a timely instruction. India therefore needs to test not just individual platforms and software, but whether its connections survive disruption and whether troops know how to fight when they do not… and finally, how much do they rely on domestic or foreign technology for secure communications and signals.
Starlink’s recent controversy over its proposed entry into India makes this more than a theoretical concern, even though there is no direct military component involved. It received initial licences, but commercial service still awaits security compliance and other approvals amid questions about oversight and data sovereignty. The episode shows why sovereign oversight matters. If such connectivity were ever integrated with sensitive defence or intelligence functions, India would need clear authority over access and dependable alternatives.
Ukraine’s experience shows why owning and acing weapons’ technology is not the same as controlling the networks on which those weapons depend. This is a lesson for every country. The pace of development of alternatives to Starlink in Europe, China and Russia shows just how important that control has become.
Swasti Rao is a Consulting Editor (International and Strategic Affairs) at ThePrint. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)