Key takeaways
- Ukrainian officials and pilots said on 23 October that Starlink and Starshield links still dropped near 161 km/h.
- Trump said on 22 October that Musk had "put it back", but Ukrainian Defence Ministry sources reported no confirmation of a lifted cap.
- Musk, Rubio and Hegseth each pointed to others or denied involvement, and no party has accepted responsibility for the cap.
- No satellite network of comparable scale is available as a replacement, and the EU's IRIS² constellation is not due until 2029.
Ukrainian drone units were still losing satellite links at about 161 km/h on the morning of 23 October. This was hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that SpaceX chief Elon Musk had "put it back". A Ukrainian Defence Ministry source told Interfax-Ukraine: "As of this morning, instances of connectivity loss at speeds of 161 km/h are still being observed. There is currently no confirmation that the restrictions have been lifted."
A Ukrainian government official, speaking to POLITICO on condition of anonymity, said morning tests showed the 140 to 160 km/h limits were still in place and that navigation was not working properly. Trump spoke on the evening of 22 October. He declined to say whether he had called Musk, but he said the problem was solved.
What pilots see at speed
The restrictions surfaced on 13 and 14 October. Ukrainian units reported that Starshield terminals cut their connections once a drone passed a set speed. Starshield is the military version of SpaceX's Starlink network, operated under a U.S. Department of Defense contract. It was designed without the civilian speed filters, which sit around 70 km/h on commercial Starlink terminals. Reported cutoff thresholds ranged from 72 km/h to 161 km/h, and 90 km/h in some sectors.
Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones typically cruise between 160 and 400 km/h. A cap near 160 km/h leaves interceptors unable to keep pace with Russian Shahed attack drones or jet-powered UAVs. Pilots said aircraft lost signal in flight and fell.
Analyst and pilot Dimko Zhluktenko estimated the losses at tens of millions of dollars in hardware. A senior commander told The New York Times the cutoff cost his unit more than $1 million and delayed operations by days.
On 23 October a pilot with the Magyar's Birds unit, call sign "Leon", told Politico about the partial recovery: We accelerate above 180 km/h, fly for a couple of minutes, the connection drops. It falls to 140–150 km/h and then is re-established... So it works better, but with constant connection interruptions. Analyst Serhiy Sternenko wrote on X that some units reported service restored, "However, this applies by no means to all missions."
Observers are reading: how Musk, Rubio, Hegseth and Trump each locate the speed limit elsewhere, and how the episode fits Washington's pressure on Kyiv.
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A dependency with no substitute in sight
The Pentagon funded 500 Starshield terminals for Ukraine in 2023. In August 2024 a second contract raised the total to 3,000 terminals, Bloomberg reported. Ukrainian units built their drone tactics around that network.
For now, no alternative network operates at comparable scale. The European Union's IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) constellation is not due until 2029. Amazon Leo has fewer than 400 satellites. Zelensky has met the Norwegian defence contractor Kongsberg, which points to the search for other options, but no replacement is in service.
Until one is, Ukrainian pilots will keep testing the link at speed and slowing down when it fails. As of 23 October, Trump's statement and the Ukrainian telemetry do not match.
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