First the engine has to warm up. The soldiers repeatedly let it howl loudly, then rattle constantly for a while. He sounds like a moped. The drone he is supposed to drive looks like a large, self-made model airplane: at the very front there is a propeller, rigid wings, and underneath there is a chunky gray body filled with ten kilograms of explosives.
The drone is a disposable product. From this field in eastern Ukraine it is supposed to fly hundreds of kilometers into Russian-occupied territory. And crash into a target there. It looks very simple on videos on the Internet: Large drones rush from catapults to music, fly over night-time fields for a few seconds, and then the target is in sight. It gets closer and closer, then the transmission stops. Sometimes a second drone films the explosion with its onboard camera. Not only static targets such as army bases or substations are hit. The drones also fall onto moving tank trucks or army transports seemingly effortlessly. Ukrainian special forces upload footage of such attacks to Telegram every hour.
The reality is more complicated: the soldiers have been standing at the edge of a gigantic sunflower field for hours. They have set up their catapult right next to a row of trees. In this case it is an ordinary trailer with a launch ramp mounted on it. Where the field is located must remain secret.
Actually, two drones should have been in the air at dusk. It's already pitch black and one of the men is working on the aircraft with a headlamp. One has problems with the motor, the other cannot establish a connection. So everyone has no choice but to wait. It's a starry night, the men are standing next to their vehicles, smoking and talking. Once the engine has warmed up properly, it now makes a good impression. It can start.
The soldiers take cover behind a car at the edge of the field. The drone whistles from the catapult with a hissing noise and the engine starts to roar. The bird is in the air. The engine noise becomes quieter.
The target of the drone, which has a wingspan of about three meters, is somewhere between 30 and 300 kilometers behind the first Russian position. The Ukrainians speak of a “middle strike”. If drones continue, there is talk of “deep strikes”. The “middle strikes” received particular attention in the spring when the Ukrainians announced that they wanted to cut off the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula from supplies in this way. Since then, they have released thousands of videos showing drones attacking tankers, cargo ships and military transport.
The drones are equipped with small satellite internet receivers. You have a camera whose image is transmitted via the Internet to the drone pilot's screen. This means they can not only attack stationary targets with fixed GPS coordinates, but also hunt moving targets behind the front. In doing so, Ukraine is trying to destroy Russian logistics and increase the pressure to the point that Moscow will at least agree to a ceasefire.
Suddenly a loud rattle comes closer
The receivers of the “Middle Strike” drones come almost exclusively from the company Starlink – and that could become a big problem for Ukraine. Because Starlink belongs to the American space company SpaceX. And this brings into play a man who has personally intervened in the Ukraine war several times and who is said to have a certain volatility: the tech entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
In the field in eastern Ukraine, after the drone took off, the soldiers happily went back to the catapult when suddenly there was a loud rattling sound in the air. It's getting closer and closer, it's almost over the men. They pause for a moment, then run wildly, away from the cars and into the thicket. The main thing is to get away. In the dark they stumble over each other and one falls. A drone rushes over the row of trees and then flies a little higher back in the direction from which it came.
The men look at each other and curse. One laughs. And after just a few seconds the solution comes via voice message. The pilots of the drone that they have just launched into the air report: The headwind was too strong. The drone almost crashed. The pilots therefore first let them fly with the wind in order to gain altitude - over the heads of their comrades. Only then could they turn the drone around and fly in the direction of their target again.
The drone is controlled remotely via the internet
Thanks to the long range of the drones, they do not have to be launched in the so-called death zone directly behind the front, but rather dozens of kilometers away. But here too there is always the risk of becoming a target of Russian drones. The pilots who control the drones once they are in the air are therefore located hundreds of kilometers away in a large city, and their location should also remain secret. They can control the drones via the Internet connection of the Starlink satellites, no matter where their control panel is.
Just two days after the start of the war, the then Ukrainian Minister of Digitalization Mykhailo Fedorov publicly asked Elon Musk to activate Starlink in Ukraine. The tech billionaire immediately agreed. The Ukrainians used the laptop-sized receivers to give civilians near the front lines access to the Internet despite destroyed infrastructure. And the Ukrainian army has also been using the technology since the beginning of the war.
Today, the Starlink receivers only work in the regions that belong to Ukraine under international law. The Ukrainians can therefore direct their drones to targets in Crimea and Luhansk. But they don't come to Russia itself. As soon as a drone with satellite reception enters Russian airspace, it loses its connection. The government in Kiev is therefore doing everything it can to change Musk's mind in this regard.
The “Order of Freedom” for Musk
Musk has already given Ukraine a surprising advantage on the battlefield once this year. Until the beginning of February, Russia's troops had also used Starlink receivers, which they procured via detours abroad. They enabled the attackers to transfer data at the front, and at some point the Russians also mounted the receivers on drones.
Again it was Mykhailo Fedorov, now defense minister, who persuaded Musk to put an end to it. Since the beginning of February, registration with the government app Dija has been required to use a receiver on Ukrainian territory. Russia's army was thus separated from technology.
Given this success, Kyiv is now hoping for Musk again. The Ukrainians would like to use Starlink receivers over Russian territory, at least in the first 200 kilometers behind the border. This would allow the Ukrainians to disrupt Russian logistics deeper behind the front line and destroy ballistic missile launch vehicles.
The Ukrainian government is therefore leaving no stone unturned to make Musk feel more favorable. At the end of August, President Volodymyr Zelenskyj awarded Musk the “Order of Freedom,” the highest state award for foreigners, by decree. Kiev can no longer rely on Fedorov as a whisperer because Zelensky separated from him in the dispute. He is no longer part of the government.
The addiction could be dangerous
At the end of July it briefly seemed as if an agreement had been reached. Zelensky announced an agreement between SpaceX and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and asked the American Donald Trump for his approval. But Trump denied the agreement with Musk, saying he was worried about an escalation of the war. Zelenskyj then seemed to be trying to blame his sacked defense minister. Fedorov, on the other hand, said he was still in contact with Musk. But there has been no turning point to date. According to Fedorov, Musk stands by his negative decision and says it is “time for a deal.”
Musk is following the US President's line. Like him, Musk – despite all his support for Ukraine – had repeatedly distinguished himself as a spreader of Russian propaganda. In the first year of the war, Musk is said to have thwarted a Ukrainian attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. He later justified his decision by saying that Starlink is a civilian technology that should “not contribute to the escalation of wars.” There were also reports of telephone conversations with Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. Controversies later followed with Poland, which pays the monthly installments for some of the Ukrainian Starlink receivers.
Musk's satellite internet continues to be vital for Ukraine. The army not only uses Starlink to control drones, but also uses it to handle data transfers and communication at the front. Government agencies and civilian companies continue to rely on the technology. The company is therefore also becoming a target for hybrid operations. A Starlink ground station in Poland was recently set on fire, and the government in Warsaw assumes Russian involvement.
So dependence on technology is dangerous for Ukrainians for several reasons. Kyiv is therefore working on an alternative, together with an unspecified European partner. A European system of its own would reduce dependence on Musk and create new opportunities for attacks in Russia.
According to the secret service, Russia has 32 Rasswet satellites in space
But Russia is also working on its own satellite internet. The company “Office 1440” has been developing the Starlink equivalent “Rasswet” (Sunrise) for years. The project appears to be civilian to the outside world. In a promotional video, a woman is seen in front of a secluded house connecting to the Internet via a compact receiver.
In Kyiv, however, the project is viewed as an existential threat. According to the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR, Russia currently has 32 Rassvet satellites in space. That doesn't seem much, especially compared to the around 12,000 Starlink satellites. But according to Ukrainian estimates, only 200 to 250 satellites are needed for military use in Ukraine. A number that could be reached next year. Military blogger and innovation advisor to Ukrainian President Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov has been warning urgently for months and calling for countermeasures.
Russia can already cause damage with its drones far behind the front. The new long-range jet-powered drones have built-in mesh modems that allow on-screen control by pilots. But with its own satellite internet receivers, Russia could reach every corner of Ukraine at any time, more cheaply and more effectively.
The wind has to be right
Moscow is also making progress defensively. A Russian company has developed jammers that can “blind” Starlink satellites. In an area of around 20 kilometers around the jammer, the pilots become blind, they do not receive any image signals from there and cannot search for moving targets. This technology race is still not decided. And satellite internet is just one domain of many.
The soldiers in the field just have to get their drones into the air and their job is done. But this is a difficult business. The most complex part is the operation planning and the selection of the starting locations. The drone launch should actually be quick. As in a Formula 1 pit stop, the men with assigned roles screw the drones together and anchor the catapult in the ground. The explosives are added last; a fuse prevents them from accidentally detonating. Only when the drone flies over occupied territory is it unlocked remotely.
Weather conditions are also important. The wind has to be right because the range and fuel consumption depend on it. As soon as a drone is in the air, soldiers enter its location data into applications that neighboring units have access to. Otherwise it could happen that your own air defense will knock them out of the sky. The drones initially fly at a height of hundreds of meters and only descend when approaching the target. Further down they would be easy targets given their size. And despite careful planning, many of the large drones are taken out of the sky.
Russia also has eyes in the air
And even here in the field, kilometers behind the death zone, things can quickly become hectic. The soldiers keep running away from the catapult and the vehicles into the thicket of the row of trees. From time to time you can hear drones approaching or flying past. Most of them are big and heavy, sounding like scooters going by. The sound does not indicate whether they are Russian or Ukrainian. This cannot be said with certainty based on the direction of flight either. All the men can do is run, as far away from the vehicles as possible. Large drones are not very maneuverable, so the pilot usually opts for the simple, static target.
But the soldiers here are used to worse. Your unit is part of the military police, but is part of the special forces. Most have been fighting for years and have served in other units. As first-person view (FPV) pilots, they sat for weeks in small holes in the ground in the death zone or as infantrymen on the front lines. They've already made themselves straight. The prevailing idea among soldiers is that comparatively safe positions within the army must be “earned” in this way.
