Ukrainian drone maker Wild Hornets is rethinking projects it is currently working on, including launching interceptors from aerial platforms, because of limits on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet. Spokesman Mike Orliuk told The War Zone (TWZ) this on 20 October. The company builds Sting interceptors, which it says destroyed over 15,000 Shaheds and Gerberas, a cheaper Shahed lookalike, in a year. Orliuk said Sting’s current operations are unaffected.
The stakes rise as Russia shifts to faster drones. Ukrainian defense technology adviser Serhii Beskrestnov counted more than 2,500 jet-powered Gerans, Russia’s version of the Shahed, in August. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 16 October that these drones fly faster than 400 km/h. He added that some Ukrainian interceptors chasing them work through Starlink. When the link was slowed, Ukraine could not intercept some of them, he said.
“Our own communications system provides the basic connection to our interceptors,” Orliuk said. The company’s remote-control technology can draw on various internet sources, he added, though the military often uses Starlink. Even then, the terminal does not need to move at high speed. It only links the command center to a ground station, which Orliuk compared to a cell tower.
“For these needs, everything is operating normally with Starlink at the moment,” he said.
“Some drones carry a terminal on board and need to fly at high speed with it,” Orliuk said. “In such cases, Starlink’s limitations make their operation impossible.”
That is why the company is rethinking the air-launch project. Wild Hornets has made no clear decision yet but will test alternatives, Orliuk said. He declined to describe them.
“I believe, in any case, depending on a single solution is very risky,” he said.
Orliuk said he has spoken with other companies that rely far more on Starlink and have expressed concerns. He pointed to growing interest in Europe’s Eutelsat network, though “creating something like Starlink won’t be easy.”
Who ordered the slowdown remains unclear. The order to slow Ukraine’s Starshield service came from inside the White House, two US officials and a Western official said. A US official told TWZ the president never made such a request. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 17 October that the slowdown had “nothing to do with the White House” and called “a report on that” “categorically false,” without saying which report he meant.
Elon Musk ordered the speed cap on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink network that Ukraine’s drones rely on, The Wall Street Journal reported on 20 October. Earlier, Musk said that such limits are decided by the US military and “ultimately POTUS.” Speaking to reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on 20 October, according to WSJ, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We haven’t made any directives or anything like that,” CBS News reported.
For a week, no one with a hand on the system said the decision was theirs. Musk pointed to the US military and the president, and Trump said he did not know who it was. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the cap has hampered the drones they use to intercept Russian Shaheds and to strike Russian forces in occupied territory. Kyiv says the cap remains in place, and at about 160 km/h it makes intercepting jet-powered drones and missiles that fly about twice as fast virtually impossible.
Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the network, people familiar with the matter told WSJ. The slowdown, which began on 14 October, left some of Ukraine’s strike and interceptor drones virtually useless, WSJ said.
WSJ’s sources differ on Trump’s role. Some US officials said Musk acted on his own and that Trump did not specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. One person said Musk spoke with several senior administration officials, Trump among them, before imposing the cap. Two people said Musk and Trump discussed the decision by phone soon after the slowdown became public.
During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts. They asked for a shared message that the company and the administration had coordinated before Musk’s directive, the people said. The White House ran an informal inquiry into who ordered the slowdown, WSJ said.
Musk held several conversations with administration officials before the order to understand the president’s thinking, CBS reported, citing sources. He dislikes his company being seen as profiting from the war, and it is unclear how his order was carried out, CBS said.
Hegseth said the US had not pulled anything back. He said Starlink “has the option” to make decisions under its terms of service, and that from the Pentagon’s view nothing had changed, CBS reported.
Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on 16 October, Trump said he did not think either he or Musk was responsible, The Telegraph reported. On 19 October, he said, “I don’t know who it was, but I’d like to find out.”
Last week, a bipartisan group of senators asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate whether officials “directed” or “authorized” changes to Starlink and Starshield services and intelligence sharing affecting Ukraine.
On 15 October, Reuters reported that the order came from inside the White House. The officials said Pentagon leaders received a message that the Starshield service for Ukraine’s military needed to be slowed, but did not say who made the decision or who carried it out. A senior US official said “No such request was ever made by the president.”
On 16 October, The Telegraph reported, citing four sources, that Musk approached Trump with the idea of the speed limits. One of the sources said Trump agreed.
Michael Kofman, a war analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said, according to WSJ, that Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones remain limited to 160 km/h. He said actual connections run below 130 km/h, which still hampers strikes and air defense.
On 20 October, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Kyiv was still waiting for answers from the Pentagon and SpaceX, WSJ reported.
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