A Pentagon official has revealed that SpaceX Starlink satellite network had become the target of Russia's jamming attacks in March. However, Elon Musk's network responded to the attack faster than the US military, according to the official.
Starlink had slung a line of code and fixed it, and suddenly the attack "was not effective anymore," said Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told the C4ISRNET Conference.
Starlink Faced Hacking, Jamming Attempts
Starlink has been helping Ukraine remain online since Russian troops invaded the country. Kyiv had also received Starlink kits sent by Elon Musk following the request of Ukraine's vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the Space X boss for the help and urged him to visit the country after the war is over.
On March 25, Musk had also revealed that Starlink had faced hacking and jamming attempts. Though, the company had resisted all of them.
Starlink's Countermeasures Were Eye-Watering
Tremper termed Starlink's countermeasures fantastic and stated that their response was eye-watering to him. The Pentagon official also stated that the US needs such ability to maintain superiority in electromagnetic warfare as the Starlink was able to upgrade soon after the threat emerged.
"There's a really interesting case study to look at the agility that Starlink had in their ability to address that problem," said Temper, according to Business Insider.
Washington needs to make fresh systems to stand powerful in cyber warfare as more resilience and speed are needed to respond to terrific threats.
It was also revealed in March that there were 5,000 Starlink terminals in Ukraine. Meanwhile, experts had also stated that Starlink's radio signals are trackable and pose dangers to users in Ukraine.
However, Starlink has been very useful for Ukraine as its drones in the field are operational only with the help of the Starlink networks. Drones have been extremely destructive against Putin's tank army. Kyiv officials are also using Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) to track the positions of Russians and hunt them.
