So who ordered it?

Transcript

1. 100 miles an hour.
2. That's the speed limit Starlink sets for its regular customers on the move.
3. On Tuesday night,
4. a limit at the same speed landed
5. on the satellite link Ukraine's army uses to fly its drones.
6. The military version of Starlink is called Starshield.
7. Ukraine's Defence Ministry said that from the night of 13 October,
8. its terminals lost connection above 161 km/h.
9. Some units reported losing it far lower.
10. Ministry sources told Hromadske that SpaceX imposed it without warning.
11. So who ordered it?
12. Here are four accounts.
13. Elon Musk wrote that limits on Starshield are decided by the US military,
14. and ultimately the president.
15. Reuters, citing three officials,
16. reported that the order came from inside the White House.
17. A senior US official told us the president never asked for it.
18. President Trump: "It wasn't me, and I don't think it was Elon."
19. But the Telegraph, citing four sources,
20. reported that Musk proposed the limit, and one source said Trump agreed.
21. A White House official told Axios that's totally false.
22. So we read the paperwork.
23. The Space Force buys Starshield under a contract based on a 2022 Pentagon tender,
24. which asks for controls letting government managers switch a user's service on and off.
25. It doesn't mention speed, and we couldn't confirm it covers Ukraine's service.
26. Space Force papers say SpaceX owns and manages the network.
27. Every earlier Starlink limit in this war that we found was carried out by SpaceX:
28. on Ukraine's use in 2022 and 2023, on Russia's in 2024 and this February.
29. None of that tells us who ordered this one.
30. Ukraine says the limit weakened its defence against Russian jet-powered attack drones.
31. We read its Air Force's nightly reports since August.
32. For the night the restriction was reported to begin,
33. the Air Force listed 59 of 77 jet drones as shot down or suppressed.
34. That falls within the six earlier October reports with the same breakdown.
35. But its totals don't reconcile,
36. and it doesn't say which defensive systems stopped the drones.
37. These figures cannot tell us what
38. the restriction did to Ukraine's interceptor drones.
39. Since then, a Defence Ministry source,
40. and Britain's defence secretary citing Pete Hegseth,
41. have said service is restored, without giving a speed.
42. Zelensky says the limit still stands.
43. Nine senators have asked the Pentagon's inspector general,
44. its internal watchdog, to investigate.
45. SpaceX, the Pentagon and Ukraine's Defence Ministry
46. have not yet answered our questions.
47. Neither SpaceX nor the US government has said
48. on the record that it ordered the limit.