SpaceX – Elon Musk – Halted an Electromagnetic Attack on Ukraine

Defense News has a very important article about Elon Musk and SpaceX quickly halting an electromagnetic attack on Ukraine in March. The Pentagon said the fast response by the company is an important lesson about the need to act quickly. Space X is a company founded and owned by Elon Musk to colonize Mars.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk steered thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine after Ukrainian official Mykhailo Fedorov asked the CEO for help in a tweet. This was while Russia’s attacks were disrupting internet service in the country.

Starlink fixed it with a line of code. The Russian jamming effort was no longer effective.

Starlink is operated by SpaceX and provides internet coverage to 32 countries. The constellation consists of more than 2,000 mass-produced small satellites that reside in low orbit and communicate with designated transceivers on the Earth’s surface, the Blaze reports.

THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION

Unlike Space X, the government is weighed down by bureaucracy.

Dave Tremper is the director of electronic warfare for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He pointed to the private company’s ability to do it at a breakneck pace.

From the outset of the invasion, it was clear Russian President Vladimir Putin was targeting Ukrainian communication systems. An appeal went out to Mr. Musk. The next day, Starlink moved in used code to fix it.

Pentagon Top Official Noted the Government Would Have Taken Considerably Longer

Tremper noted that it would have taken the American government considerably longer to counteract the Russian electromagnetic attack.

“The next day [after reports about the Russian jamming effort hit the media], Starlink had slung a line of code and fixed it,” Tremper said. “And suddenly that [Russian jamming attack] was not effective anymore. From [the] EW technologist’s perspective, that is fantastic … and how they did that was eye-watering to me.”

The government, on the other hand, has a “significant timeline to make those types of corrections” as it muddles through analyses of what happened, decides how to fix it, and gets a contract in place for the fix.

Noting that electromagnetic warfare requires very finely tuned machinery and highly skilled operators, Tremper said the Russian invasion of Ukraine indicated how important it was to make sure that American personnel were properly trained in electromagnetic warfare operations.

[Maybe if the US wasn’t burdened by massive efforts to teach anti-Americanism and gender studies in the military, it would free them up to be better trained in operating the equipment to stop attacks?]

Elon Musk thwarted Russian plans in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine prior to this.

When the Russian government threatened to drop the International Space Station on the Earth by ceasing to provide it with resources and technology for propulsion, Musk said that he would keep the station from falling and crashing to earth and he has.

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