alt Hacker NewsThen there is the role of Starlink terminals in an actual war.
The losses caused to the Russians by drones using Starlink for connection are pretty painful, and when SpaceX switched off non-whitelisted terminals in the theatre of war, the Russian army was thrown into disarray due to sudden failures of communication between their units. AFAIK they haven't yet fully overcome that problem.
The Russians certainly wish to have something like Starlink right now, in 2026.
In the first weeks of the war, Russia targeted communications infrastructure in Ukraine. They performed cyberattacks against Viasat, rendering thousands of satellite modems unusable. They performed destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine government and telecommunications targets. Cell towers and fibre optic lines were targeted, as well as electricity infrastructure. And they started aggressively jamming wireless communications. Much of this was disastrously effective.
Starlink was one of the only reliable ways Ukraine had for remote military communications, without which Ukraine would have not been able to defend its territory nearly as effectively. Though it's impossible to know, it's plausible that Ukraine might not exist today but for Starlink.