But, Starlink terminals have GPS in them, surely? Aren’t they geofenced anyway?
They’re using them in Ukraine. Can’t geofence the country and still allow the Ukrainians to use them.
They could geogence crimea. But Elon refuses to because he wants the fascist to win.
Crimea is geofenced. That’s why Ukraine officials contacted Elon and asked him to enable it so that their drone boats could attack Russian navy there which Elon refused to do. It’s literally illegal due to US sanctions to Russia. This is what the author Walter Isaacson wrote about in his book but for some reason spun it around claiming Elon disabled it to prevent the attack when in fact it wasn’t enabled in the first place. He has later issued a correction stating that what he originally said was incorrect but this is conveniently ignored by pretty much everyone and when ever I point it out I get downvoted.
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.
And before someone comments on the “major war” point, those are Walter’s words, not Musk’s. Elon said that agreeing to do so would “make SpaceX explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation” but also later added that had he been contacted by the White House and asked to enable it he would have but they didn’t.
You don’t need to draw the fence along a national border, but yeah, I guess the front is a bit flexible.
So if they can isolate the russian starlink terminals… and they have gps… sounds like targeting coordinates for ukrainians to me.
Not necessarily. They may have identified all the serial numbers of terminals legitimately used by Ukraine then simply blocked all terminals not on that list.
Surprised it took this long
I bet its really challenging to do inventory after distribution if your records were junk.
if your records were junk.
Ohh wow… All those export controls and records are still shite?!
No way to tell how that would happen!
right after a sattelite broke into space debris and the ISS crew had to go into their ships for safety? a lot going on up there
Slashdot: ISS Astronauts Take Shelter In Boeing Starliner After Satellite Breakup
Well, this story is about disconnecting Starlink ground terminals that are being used by the Russian military inside of Ukraine.
This will upset patriot musk won’t it?
SpaceX has to do the disabling, so they are on board. I like to imagine that this was one of the conditions for the multi-billion dollar purchase of Starshield, along with exclusive use and SpaceX not being allowed to disable it anywhere for any reason.
[Excellent]
