October 27, 2024: In Ukraine, it was over a year before Russian forces understood that one reason for the frequent Ukrainian battlefield successes was SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network. Thousands of Starlink satellite receivers were used by Ukrainian forces

Russian forces have long suffered from inadequate or absent military radios. While Western military radios have been using frequency hopping and software defined operation since the 1980s, Russian forces were several decades behind. Obsolete Russian military radios were a visible problem during the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the government ordered modern encrypted military radios be developed and issued to Russian troops as soon as possible. This didn’t begin to happen until 2017. By 2022 there were not enough of the new Azart radios available for all the Russian troops going into Ukraine. There were many units still using the old, unencrypted radios that the Americans, and most Western forces, replaced decades ago.

Azart was an effort to duplicate the U.S. Army SINCGARS series of radios introduced in the 1980s as a solution to jamming of radio transmissions on the battlefield, as well as the risk of the enemy understanding these messages. Russian jamming of tactical radios was a threat throughout the Cold War and SINCGARS was the first successful solution because it used effective frequency hopping. This involved rapidly changing frequencies according to a pre-arranged pattern. This enabled SINCGARS users to have a communications edge against opponents.

The three radios in the SINCGARS family had a range of 8-35 kilometers. Unfortunately, these are FM (line of sight) radios that lose a lot of their range in hilly or urban terrain. Operators have also found that the range is halved when the frequency hopping was used. When a user finds the signal fading, they will switch to single frequency mode to keep the connection. This allows the enemy to jam the signal, and listen in. The Russian military radios, especially the new ones, proved unreliable and often unavailable. In Afghanistan NATO forces could use satellite radios as well as FM tactical radios using airborne repeater aircraft.

Russia has none of this for its troops in Ukraine while Ukrainian forces have free access to the high-speed Starlink satellite communications system. Ukrainian forces began receiving thousands of Starlink terminals soon after the 2022 Russian invasion. Starlink engineers also advised Ukrainian users how to avoid the Russians detecting a user and their location for an air or missile attack. Starlink quickly modified their system so it could be used in moving vehicles and obtain electrical power from vehicle batteries. Now Ukrainian forces could use Starlink when attacking as well as defending.

The Russian Azart radio proved less capable than expected under combat conditions because there were not enough of them and these radios were unable to remain in contact with higher headquarters. In combat Russian support forces are supposed to erect temporary repeater towers or employ vehicles carrying mobile towers so that Azart users on the front line could stay in touch with other units and the chain of command that went all the way back to the Stavka/Great Staff in Moscow that controlled all military operations. The repeater towers did not work because armed Ukrainians found and destroyed them.

Some Russian commanders still had their cellphones as well as Ukrainian sim cards that enabled use on the Ukraine cell phone system, which the Ukrainians kept operational. Most Russian troops were ordered to leave their cell phones behind because the Ukrainians could track cell-phone users and in the case of Russian troops, use that information for an airstrike or ambush. Some veteran Russian officers and troops, especially those who had served in Syria obtained Chinese walkie-talkies similar to those often used by Islamic terrorists and irregular forces worldwide. In Syria the Russians eventually banned soldiers from using modern 4G cell phones that could be used to post photos and videos to social media. In addition, some major bases in Syria had jammers going 24/7 to prevent any use of 4G phones, especially by local Islamic terrorists who were constantly trying to kill Russians, often with the help of cell phones that could provide a target beacon for swarms of quadcopters armed with explosives. Many Russian troops and civilian contractors carried their 4G phones anyway and when outside the range of the jammers powered them up and sent accumulated emails and photos home and to social media.

The problems Russia had with cell phones in Syria were also taking place in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region where Russian forces invaded in 2014, a year before Russian troops showed up in Syria. The communications problems in Donbas were worse because the Ukrainians quickly mobilized and halted the effort to take two Ukrainian provinces. The Russian advance halted and has been stalled until 2022.

In Syria the Russians tried to exploit the enemy use of cell phones but found that more difficult than expected. At the same time Russian troops with cell phones became a major intelligence problem, and that continued in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine as well. For example, in late 2017 the Russian-run government in Donbas sentenced a local man to ten years in jail for distributing a cell phone photo via twitter that showed Russian Army vehicles and other equipment in the rebel-controlled half of Donbas. Russia denies they have troops there but it has been an open secret because of cell phones, Internet access and that most Ukrainians in Russian occupied Donbas want the Russians gone. Sending one man to prison and publicizing it is expected to make the population less ready to do this sort of thing. That didn’t work.

Russia used Ukraine as a test site for new Cyber War tactics and techniques. In late 2016 Ukraine accused Russia of employing hackers to insert trackers into cell phones used by Ukrainian military personnel fighting in Donbas. Ukraine has also found evidence of the same or similar hackers, usually civilian groups working as contractors for the Russian government, going after numerous government and commercial networks in Ukraine. Some of these hackers were also identified as going after targets in the United States. The hacking of cell phones used by military personnel is believed to be the cause of several accurate and fatal attacks on Ukrainian troops in Donbas. The hackers made it possible to track the location of the phone owners and accurately fire shells or rockets at them.

These capabilities had already attracted the attention of the U.S., which was supplying Ukraine with military equipment and technical assistance. American and NATO electronic warfare experts paid close attention to what the Russians were up to in Donbas and the cell phone hack was not unexpected. When it did arrive, it was scrutinized and dissected. That led to countermeasures that were ignored by the Russians and used by Ukrainian forces fighting the 2022 invasion.

Their poor communications capability has degraded Russian combat capabilities and made Russian troops much more vulnerable. For example, the Russians have to be careful using air strikes or artillery fire near their own troops because there is no way for ground forces to communicate with aircraft or distant units providing the shell, rocket or ballistic missile fire to report they or the target had moved. This is one of the reasons for the Russians shifting most of their artillery fire to cities, because these targets don’t move, like the Ukrainian soldiers and irregulars do. At the same time the Ukrainian forces have reliable, and often encrypted, communications. This was because the Ukrainians kept their cell phone system operational by quietly making changes to it that made it more difficult for Russian hackers or military forces to shut the system down. Where there was cell service Ukrainians could use encrypted apps to communicate while Russian forces used their Azart or pre-Azart military radios or Chinese walkie-talkies, where communication is in the clear.

Nearly all Ukrainians can speak Russian as well as Ukrainian and have methods or equipment to detect and locate Russian troops communicating without encryption. Azart has modern encryption but using it reduces the range of the radios by up to 50 percent. Because of that Russian troops rarely use the encryption. The Ukrainians know all about Azart because soon after Russian troops began receiving them in 2017, many also showed up on the black market, where anyone could buy one. The Ukrainians did so and, along with NATO, discovered what Azart could and could not do, and what its weaknesses were. Ukrainian and NATO tech experts concluded that, with proper countermeasures, the Azart radios would become a major liability for Russian commanders and it was. Some Russian troops got Ukrainian sim cards for their cell phones so they could call home and the Ukrainians exploited this by harvesting those messages and postings to social media to monitor Russian morale, operations and sometimes use location information for attacks.

Russian commanders, unable to communicate, must stay on the roads and are often stalled because they have not received new orders or cannot report that they are under attack or that a unit has suffered heavy losses and requires assistance, especially evacuation of the wounded. Local civilians are no help because they move away when Russian troops are near but are very helpful to any Ukrainian forces who ask for information. This is one reason Russian troops were told, after about ten days, to loot at will to obtain supplies. This enraged Ukrainian civilians even more and, since the Ukrainians had their cellphones, images of the Russian troops looting and abusing civilians quickly spread worldwide, including to Russia, where civilians had been told that Ukrainians welcomed their Russian liberators.

In the last year the Russian communications problems have eased as more black-market Starlink terminals reached Russian forces. This was possible because Turkey and many Middle Eastern Arab nations tolerate, or even tax, local black market operations. That black market network soon obtained Starlink terminals. This was because a growing number of legitimate Starlink owners found the high prices offered for Starlink terminals was too good to pass up. The owners reported their Starlink terminals were stolen or destroyed and bought replacements. When these replacements began to disappear, SpaceX grew suspicious and found the black market for Starlink. SpaceX engineers sought to prevent black market terminals from being used. Every time Starlink implemented one of these fixes, Russian engineers quickly developed fixes.

SpaceX and Ukraine consider blocking Russian use of Starlink vital, but the Russians consider maintenance of their Starlink access a matter of life or death for their force.