Assuming this is Crimea, this was likely done like this:
- Starlink-controlled drone boat approaches to within 20km of Crimea. - A repeater drone is launched to serve as a relay. - Normal FPV drones are launched from the boat, controlled through both the relay drone and Starlink. (I think fiber-optics won't work over the sea) - FPV drones fly to Crimea, striking targets previously identified by the British/US surveillance planes
The key to countering this is detecting active Starlink terminals in the open sea. From what I remember when I was reading about Starlink, the beam is relative focused, meaning that if a signal is detected, there is an actively communicating terminal nearby. The frequencies used are known, so: - Develop a simple antenna capable of detecting the strength of Starlink signal. That's it, no need to 'understand' what's being transmitted, just that there IS something. - Stick it in a waterproof package with a battery, GPS, and a satellite radio (or any other way to communicate back, maybe a simple mobile would work) - Have the device send a simple "position + Starlink strength + timestamp" to the control station on land - Attach to a buoy - Seed the 20km area around Crimea with these buoys - With some basic data processing, you can in realtime (or near-realtime, based on how frequently you set the devices to send updates) triangulate quite precise location of any active Starlink communication, as well as detect any attempts to make 'path' through these buoys.
Yeah man just detect the sidelobes of a high gain array when your detector is practically tangent to the emitter boresight. Super easy, why didn't these dummies think of that??
The problem that makes them very hard to triangulate is that the receiver/transmitter on the boat uses a phased array to transmit a very narrow beam at very low power output, it also not a continues signal, but intermittent and with changing power output, since it continuesly varies the amount of power to the minimum required to reach a given satellite - and every 1-3 minutes the geometry changes again as it hops to a new satellite.
The signal from the satellite is much stronger, so an array of receivers would primarily be useful if you wanted to locate the satellite, not the receiver. The beam is 10-30km wide on the earth, but it's not a beam pointing at any individual receiver continuously. Those beams are constantly scanning back and forth over the surface, regardless of whether there's a Starlink disc in the area or not.
The tiny bit of side-lopes that a phased array antenna does leak, which is already intermittent, would be even less frequent since a lot of it would be blocked by lack of line-of-sight over the water. So a detector would basically get a tiny bit of random scattered signal, at constantly changing power levels due to the Starlink disc constantly changing the power level of it's signal to the minimum needed - which makes it impossible to triangulate based on either signal strength or direction (due to how much scattering you get at sea).
Drone boats (aka remote-controlled boats) are in use.
Relay drones (aka drones with signal repeaters) are in use.
FPV drones (aka drones controlled by a camera) are in use.
- Starlink-controlled drone boat approaches to within 20km of Crimea.
- A repeater drone is launched to serve as a relay.
- Normal FPV drones are launched from the boat, controlled through both the relay drone and Starlink. (I think fiber-optics won't work over the sea)
- FPV drones fly to Crimea, striking targets previously identified by the British/US surveillance planes
While USVs have been used as repeaters for FPV drones, most of the strikes you see in crimea are regular fixed wings and long-range UAVs with a thermal camera and guided by starlink. They are probably launched from Odessa. So the problem for russia remains the same, they need to figure out how to jam starlink. I'm no electronic warfare expert, so I'm not sure whether it's feasible or not.
There is a 100% guaranteed way to do this. Launch a combat satellite into orbit and shoot down Elon's satellites. But this will cause a couple of huge legal problems internationally. You can also substitute "accidental" collisions of satellites with space debris. Or else Russia should massively strike with EMP weapons on the territory of Ukraine and also completely destroy its energy sector. The options are not very realistic.
You realistically can't shoot down the thousands of starlinks in orbit (approx. 9000 at the moment). They could very likely replenish them faster than they could be shot down, especially when starship starts deploying them as well in a couple months.
And an emp blast would mean using a large nuclear weapon outside the atmosphere, which would also destroy any satellites on that side of the earth and would be an attack against both NATO and China that could not be ignored. The modern world is hugely reliant on satellites, and destroying a huge portion of them indiscriminately, including this of your allies, would be suicide. It's less likely that NATO retaliates if Russia uses small tactical nukes on Keiv than if they use an emp blast.
You are correct that these options are not very realistic.
Russians need to understand that those pesa radars maybe can work against big targets, but they need to rush the development of AESA ones to start fighting against those small drones, it's that or they need to at least put soldiers in patrol around their airfields looking for drones.
?? The plane has an Pesa Radar, but their air defense systems use Aesa and one of the system is passive radar, which function isnt catching drones. At least the newest Pantsir do.
Not really relevant, the size of the radar is more relevant given this drones have, from what i read, uniform median RCS signature from most bands. Not even counting the S-300V was made with a PESA from the 80s and was made to intercept RVs, or AN/SPY-1D, which is also a PESA and which has the ability to track ballistics for SM-2 interception.
The strike is not visible in the pictures and video of the strike has not yet appeared. I have no reason to doubt them hitting these but claiming a strike in the title would've risked having the post taken down.
I mean the pictures are right there. I'm not telling you to believe what you see if you don't want to but given what is shown i find it more likely that they did hit the targets.
I don't see any strikes on these pictures, just far away shots. If they'd hit anything worth showing it would have been shown already, Ukraine is always desperate to get good PR.
You're speaking as if dozens of Tu-95, Tu-22, and S-300-400 air defense systems haven't already been destroyed by these unmanned aerial vehicles. I'm not even counting the warships sailing in the Black Sea, let alone the Su-30 that was hit by a SeaBaby drone.
Wouldn't work. Thanks to u/Alarming-Nobody-2471 for explanation.
Assuming this is Crimea, this was likely done like this:- Starlink-controlled drone boat approaches to within 20km of Crimea.- A repeater drone is launched to serve as a relay.- Normal FPV drones are launched from the boat, controlled through both the relay drone and Starlink. (I think fiber-optics won't work over the sea)- FPV drones fly to Crimea, striking targets previously identified by the British/US surveillance planesThe key to countering this is detecting active Starlink terminals in the open sea.From what I remember when I was reading about Starlink, the beam is relative focused, meaning that if a signal is detected, there is an actively communicating terminal nearby. The frequencies used are known, so:- Develop a simple antenna capable of detecting the strength of Starlink signal. That's it, no need to 'understand' what's being transmitted, just that there IS something.- Stick it in a waterproof package with a battery, GPS, and a satellite radio (or any other way to communicate back, maybe a simple mobile would work)- Have the device send a simple "position + Starlink strength + timestamp" to the control station on land- Attach to a buoy- Seed the 20km area around Crimea with these buoys- With some basic data processing, you can in realtime (or near-realtime, based on how frequently you set the devices to send updates) triangulate quite precise location of any active Starlink communication, as well as detect any attempts to make 'path' through these buoys.Should be fairly simple and cheap."Should be fairly simple and cheap." Spoiler alert: In reality it's neither simple or cheap.
Well atleast 30 people need to massively profit from selling the solution
Yeah man just detect the sidelobes of a high gain array when your detector is practically tangent to the emitter boresight. Super easy, why didn't these dummies think of that??
You seem to know more about the topic, please ELI20 why this wouldn't work.
AFAIK, Starlink beam is pretty wide on the receiving end.
The problem that makes them very hard to triangulate is that the receiver/transmitter on the boat uses a phased array to transmit a very narrow beam at very low power output, it also not a continues signal, but intermittent and with changing power output, since it continuesly varies the amount of power to the minimum required to reach a given satellite - and every 1-3 minutes the geometry changes again as it hops to a new satellite. The signal from the satellite is much stronger, so an array of receivers would primarily be useful if you wanted to locate the satellite, not the receiver. The beam is 10-30km wide on the earth, but it's not a beam pointing at any individual receiver continuously. Those beams are constantly scanning back and forth over the surface, regardless of whether there's a Starlink disc in the area or not. The tiny bit of side-lopes that a phased array antenna does leak, which is already intermittent, would be even less frequent since a lot of it would be blocked by lack of line-of-sight over the water. So a detector would basically get a tiny bit of random scattered signal, at constantly changing power levels due to the Starlink disc constantly changing the power level of it's signal to the minimum needed - which makes it impossible to triangulate based on either signal strength or direction (due to how much scattering you get at sea).
its simpler than the whole water drone to mother ship drone to fpv drone business lol
Why would that part be difficult?
Drone boats (aka remote-controlled boats) are in use.
Relay drones (aka drones with signal repeaters) are in use.
FPV drones (aka drones controlled by a camera) are in use.
a+b+c
well, to a guy uneducated on the subject, it seems just has hard to do as the solution
While USVs have been used as repeaters for FPV drones, most of the strikes you see in crimea are regular fixed wings and long-range UAVs with a thermal camera and guided by starlink. They are probably launched from Odessa. So the problem for russia remains the same, they need to figure out how to jam starlink. I'm no electronic warfare expert, so I'm not sure whether it's feasible or not.
There is a 100% guaranteed way to do this. Launch a combat satellite into orbit and shoot down Elon's satellites. But this will cause a couple of huge legal problems internationally. You can also substitute "accidental" collisions of satellites with space debris. Or else Russia should massively strike with EMP weapons on the territory of Ukraine and also completely destroy its energy sector. The options are not very realistic.
You realistically can't shoot down the thousands of starlinks in orbit (approx. 9000 at the moment). They could very likely replenish them faster than they could be shot down, especially when starship starts deploying them as well in a couple months.
And an emp blast would mean using a large nuclear weapon outside the atmosphere, which would also destroy any satellites on that side of the earth and would be an attack against both NATO and China that could not be ignored. The modern world is hugely reliant on satellites, and destroying a huge portion of them indiscriminately, including this of your allies, would be suicide. It's less likely that NATO retaliates if Russia uses small tactical nukes on Keiv than if they use an emp blast.
You are correct that these options are not very realistic.
No need to shoot them all.
Kessler syndrome
Kessler system doesnt work in LEO where Starlink is. The debris would just fall to Earth with no stable orbit.
There are thousands of satellites in that constellation.
They would probably start comprehensively geofencing Ukraine if their satellites were being destroyed
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At least you didn’t make any assumptions.
Why have EW or shorad when you can lose $100s of millions in assets?
Especially the ones that you dont even make anymore
The right image on the first frame looks like warthunder bro
they did add the mig-25 to the beta client recently
The fact that these are pictures and not a video, which they usually post, us telling. Of there is a one, I'd like to take a look
Mig31 Right, looks like a Bad rendering.
PESA radars at their finest...
Russians need to understand that those pesa radars maybe can work against big targets, but they need to rush the development of AESA ones to start fighting against those small drones, it's that or they need to at least put soldiers in patrol around their airfields looking for drones.
?? The plane has an Pesa Radar, but their air defense systems use Aesa and one of the system is passive radar, which function isnt catching drones. At least the newest Pantsir do.
S300/400, Pantsir S1/S2 all uses PESA search and tracking radars..
Only S500 and Pantsir SM use search and tracking AESA radars.
Not really relevant, the size of the radar is more relevant given this drones have, from what i read, uniform median RCS signature from most bands. Not even counting the S-300V was made with a PESA from the 80s and was made to intercept RVs, or AN/SPY-1D, which is also a PESA and which has the ability to track ballistics for SM-2 interception.
is this from few month ago or is it something new?
If they are viewed, why not strike?
The strike is not visible in the pictures and video of the strike has not yet appeared. I have no reason to doubt them hitting these but claiming a strike in the title would've risked having the post taken down.
Of course. We all know how trustworthy Ukraine is, every word coming out of their propaganda machine can be taken as gospel.
I mean the pictures are right there. I'm not telling you to believe what you see if you don't want to but given what is shown i find it more likely that they did hit the targets.
I don't see any strikes on these pictures, just far away shots. If they'd hit anything worth showing it would have been shown already, Ukraine is always desperate to get good PR.
You're speaking as if dozens of Tu-95, Tu-22, and S-300-400 air defense systems haven't already been destroyed by these unmanned aerial vehicles. I'm not even counting the warships sailing in the Black Sea, let alone the Su-30 that was hit by a SeaBaby drone.
And when Ukraine actually strikes them there's always a footage of that. There's none for this, so it didn't happen until shown otherwise.
Prymary unit has loads of heavy DMG insinuated clips and there's imo no reason to doubt them, they're GUR and they're expensive
These pictures may not have come from drones. Perhaps they hacked into surveillance cameras.
Or perhaps these photos are composed with photoshop or AI.
Security cameras wouldn't have heat sensors I think
Yes they do. Commercial and some home IR cameras are available. I’d expect military bases to have them.
Another glorious victory for Russia, it should be over anytime now.
More work of the Ukrainian CGi division
Can't stop, won't stop... until all of Ukraine.
The Mig's wreckage will show up on satellite soon enough if this was real.
Is there no way to jam starlink ?
Yes there is, but the jammers would be a bright loud RF source.
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