Musk “stopped” naval drones 70 km from the target: how the first attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea was foiled
In September 2022, Ukraine first tried to use maritime drones against Russian ships in the Sevastopol Bay, but 70 km from the target, the connection with billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink was lost, UP reports.
It was not possible to persuade Musk to turn on the connection, so Ukraine modified the drones.
In a secure bunker, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Malyuk, the commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, and the ideologist of the entire surface drone program, Brigadier General of the SBU Military Counterintelligence, call sign Hunter, watched the progress of these boats.
According to Hunter, these were the first samples of naval drones. Some of them drowned at sea or blew themselves up on the way to Sevastopol Bay. However, 5 boats, each carrying 108 kilograms of TNT, managed to break through the waves and were approaching Sevastopol.
“We were 70 kilometers away from the Admiral Makarov frigate. Everyone was worried that we were going to attack it. And then our communication was cut off. Elon Musk turned off the Starlink, which we used to control the drones,” said one of the participants in the operation.
Mikhail Fedorov tried to convince Musk to reestablish contact, but he did not listen. American politicians said that it was a private company and they could not put pressure on it.
The team attempted to return the drones to the base, but only two boards made it back.
“Even the two boards that returned provided invaluable information. On communications, navigation, hull, and so on,” the sources said.
One of the developers said that the SBU and the Navy had a whole military laboratory that studied everything, took it all into account, and a month later, in October, they managed to hit Russian targets in the bays of Sevastopol.
It should be reminded that Elon Musk’s action was first reported in early September 2023. At the time, CNN reported that the head of SpaceX had secretly ordered his engineers to shut down the Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the Russian navy. Musk replied that Starlink was not activated in the regions in question. Therefore, “SpaceX has not deactivated anything.”
