“We cannot donate more stations to Ukraine, or fund existing ones for an unlimited period,” SpaceX’s head of government affairs wrote in a letter to US Army headquarters, the Pentagon, according to CNN.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk chirp Last week, the effort has so far cost the company $80 million and that the cost will exceed $100 million before the end of the year.
According to documents obtained by CNN, SpaceX expects a cost of close to $400 million for the next year.
great military importance
SpaceX and other players have donated about 20,000 Starlink stations to the Ukrainian army. With several Starlink satellites, it is possible to connect to the Internet even when all other connections are interrupted, which is said to be of great importance. The service is used not only for oral and written communication, but also for example to fly drones and send videos to assist artillery.
“Starlink was absolutely necessary because the Russians attacked the Ukrainian communications network,” Dmitriy Alperovich, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator Research Center, told CNN.
Without this service, they would have really been blind in many cases, he says.
catastrophic interruptions
Recently, Ukrainian soldiers in several locations suffered a loss of contact during the advance and reclaim territory, according to information from financial times. A Ukrainian government source said some outages had led to a “catastrophic” loss of communications.
Roman Senesin, who works for a foundation that raised money for Starlink donations, says the outage is due to Ukrainians moving to formerly Russian-controlled areas where the service has been disabled so that the Russian military can’t use it if they’re via the premium stations.
The Ukrainian military and SpaceX should coordinate better, he told the Financial Times.
Musk in stormy weather
Musk himself has received heavy criticism recently after he proposed a peace settlement that would include, among other things, allowing Russia to keep Crimea, that Ukraine would remain neutral, and that illegal referendums on occupied territories would be rebuilt under UN control.
He signed, “That’s probably the end result anyway – the only question is how many die first.” Twitter.
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