Ukraine

[LFC]

Aug 31, 2023 21:32:25 GMT jackd said:

It's hard to justify the reported criticism of Ukraine's combined forces maneuvering when the air cover element has not been available.

No mention from the talking heads saying this of what happened when they attempted it early on. There are a lot of idiots out there who have no business expounding on this war, or probably any war.

[goldenvalley]

This is an opinion piece from WaPO but it contains information that wasn't in The New Yorker article on Musk and StarLink in Ukraine.  I'm interested in your reactions to a civilian having such power over military operations, the civilian not even being under contract with either the US or Ukraine. (The whole piece is in the link.)

The author is a history professor and writer of several books, including a biography of Musk, so he and Musk communicated directly.

"This could be a giant disaster,” he [Musk] texted. I went behind the bleachers to ask him what the problem was. He was in full Muskian crisis-hero-drama mode, this time understandably. A dangerous issue had arisen, and he believed there was “a non-trivial possibility,” as he put it, that it could lead to a nuclear war — with Starlink partly responsible. The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.

Although he had readily supported Ukraine, he believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States. (In later conversations with a few other people, he seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador.) The ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.

Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.

[jackd]

If the final arrangement allows the federal government complete control over the leased equipment, that is probably what should have been in place from the beginning. It is obviously inappropriate for decisions on military use of communication equipment to be in private hands. One can debate Musk's opinions on Crimea but support for Ukraine's military objectives and tactics should be governmnetal decisions, not those of private individuals or organizations. A much more problematic issue would arise if Musk refused to lease equipment to the government.

[indy]

First of all, I don't really take anything at face value but if it's a contest of credibility between Isaacson and Musk, Isaacson wins hands down, so I would tend toward believing his account.

Second of all, I'm confused, what leased equipment are we talking about? Musk's company owns and controls all the satellites that were used to 'turn off' the internet in the targeted area rendering the attack impotent. Having a leased transceiver on the ground is useless when the satellite is refusing to communicate with it.

Musk may own the satellites but they hover over sovereign countries and in their airspace operating with their good graces, and this is exactly the kind of idiotic and high-handed behavior that makes them decide they need some rules, so that's what I expect to happen...eventually, at the speed of government.

[LFC]

“The ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.”

So genius Musk is nothing more than a gullible fool who was easily manipulated by a Russian diplomat. What a chump.

[jackd]

True enough but Ukraine should never have been in this position in the first place. If Musk's system was going to be used, the U.S. should have had it under contract for that purpose and controlled this decision. It's failure to do so was, in my opinion, an effort to duck responsibility for supporting the Ukrainians and, in effect, cowering under Russia's threat every bit as much as Musk did.

[goldenvalley]

Josh Marshall at TPM offers these thoughts on Starlink and Ukraine and US.

I was pleased to get this email from TPM Reader PT because they hit on a critical part of the Ukraine, Musk, Starlink story. It’s also a key reason why — as we discussed in the previous post — why the Pentagon was a bit slow to grasp the complexities of the situation. The U.S. (and our treaty allies) don’t need Starlink. We have constellations of satellites with secure communications networks for our own military needs. The world’s other major powers do too. But Ukraine isn’t a major military power. So it’s relying on what’s meant to be a civilian network.

As a technical matter it would probably be relatively easy to loop Ukraine into our systems. But that would bring us much closer than we want to go to becoming an active combatant against Russia. It may also be for the security reasons PT alludes to below, ones they’re much more familiar with than I am.

It’s this issue that undergirds the whole controversy and question. But as I noted in my exchange with PT, the distinction between military and civilian here gets quite thin. Starlink is a civilian network — unless you’re one of the vast majority of the world’s countries which don’t have access to secure military satellite networks. It reminds us again that someone like Musk has power that is quite similar to those controlled only by the most powerful states in the world.

From PT …

I think that the major issue with Starlink is actually that neither the US nor our treaty allies in Europe and Asia relies on it for national security. When it comes to the national security of the US and its allies, we have several extensive collections of dedicated satellites that we use for secure communications and etc. Because we don’t use or rely on Starlink, we’ve never gotten into a contractual arrangement with SpaceX that would obligate the company to meet requirements set by our military and national security infrastructure.

If the US and our allies wanted to strongly enough, we could presumably share our actual military satellite communications systems with Ukraine. I can only guess why we haven’t done so, but it’s probably some combination of factors related to ensuring that technical details about the systems don’t leak from Ukraine, ground systems for satellite communication aren’t captured, etc.

It’s exactly because we DON’T use Starlink for our own military that we’re comfortable with Ukraine using it for theirs. But because we don’t use it for our military, because it’s really intended and mainly used as a civilian, commercial communications network, the US government doesn’t attempt to exert any control over the system. In essence, the Ukrainians are using an extremely sophisticated but still civilian, non-classified satellite communication system for their military needs. It’s not a great situation, but it’s not really different from what would happen if they were using, say, AT & T cellular telephone networks to control their drones; they’d be at the mercy of AT & T, the owner of the critical infrastructure for their military needs.

[andydp]

This just emphasizes soldiers are the same the world over.  In this case, go to the source.  Disclaimer:  I don't doubt this could have happened but, remember the sources are Ukrainian. Another way to make the Russian look bad.

A Ukrainian soldier called up Russian tech support when his captured Russian tank wouldn't start: report

A Ukrainian officer decided to call Russian tech support for help when he ran into issues operating a captured Russian tank.

The officer, whose callsign is Kochevnik, was seen in a video making what appeared to be calls trolling staff working for the Russian tank manufacturer, Uralvagonzavod. The videos were posted to YouTube by Militarnyi, a Ukraine-based media outlet reporting on the war.

VERY interesting fact:

The Russian military has lost two-thirds of its tanks since it invaded Ukraine, according to the Netherlands-based open-source intelligence website, Oryx.

Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst from Oryx, told Insider in May that Russia initially had around 3,000 operational tanks when the war began. The Russians have lost at least 2,329 tanks, per Oryx's 2022 data.

news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-soldier-called-russian-tech-052746475.html

[goldenvalley]

Oct 2, 2023 9:49:52 GMT andydp said:

This just emphasizes soldiers are the same the world over.  In this case, go to the source.  Disclaimer:  I don't doubt this could have happened but, remember the sources are Ukrainian. Another way to make the Russian look bad.

A Ukrainian soldier called up Russian tech support when his captured Russian tank wouldn't start: report

A Ukrainian officer decided to call Russian tech support for help when he ran into issues operating a captured Russian tank.

The officer, whose callsign is Kochevnik, was seen in a video making what appeared to be calls trolling staff working for the Russian tank manufacturer, Uralvagonzavod. The videos were posted to YouTube by Militarnyi, a Ukraine-based media outlet reporting on the war.

VERY interesting fact:

The Russian military has lost two-thirds of its tanks since it invaded Ukraine, according to the Netherlands-based open-source intelligence website, Oryx.

Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst from Oryx, told Insider in May that Russia initially had around 3,000 operational tanks when the war began. The Russians have lost at least 2,329 tanks, per Oryx's 2022 data.

news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-soldier-called-russian-tech-052746475.html

So with 670 odd tanks left will the Russians increasingly move to missiles to create destruction and demoralize civilians?

[andydp]

Oct 2, 2023 15:41:09 GMT goldenvalley said:

Oct 2, 2023 9:49:52 GMT andydp said:

So with 670 odd tanks left will the Russians increasingly move to missiles to create destruction and demoralize civilians?

Russian reality check:  Ground attacks aren't working because we're too stupid to pull them off.  BUT... We got missiles !!