SpaceX has taken steps to prevent Ukraine’s military from using the Starlink satellite internet service for controlling drones, SpaceX’s president said as per news agency Reuters. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has provided Ukraine’s army with broadband communications amid Russian invasion but the company’s president said that the service was “never never meant to be weaponized.”
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Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said, “Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.”
Referring to reports suggestion use of Starlink services to control drones by the Ukrainian military, the company’s president said, “There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that. There are things that we can do, and have done.”
Using Starlink with drones went beyond the scope of the agreement with the Ukrainian government, Gwynne Shotwell said, adding that the contract was intended for humanitarian purposes.
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“We know the military is using them for comms, and that’s ok. But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes,” Gwynne Shotwell said.
“We didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about it. Our starlink team may have, I don’t know. But we learned pretty quickly,” she added while talking about Starlink’s use for offensive purposes in Ukraine.
On Starlink’s outages in Ukraine last year, she said, “I don’t want to answer it because I’m not sure I know the answer.”
SpaceX’s Starlink terminals in Ukraine have helped the country’s military while Russia has attempted to jam Starlink signals though SpaceX countered by hardening the service’s software, company’s chief executive Elon Musk said earlier.
