Military

Ukraine Uses 1950s Satellite Tech to Thwart Russian Attack

Austin Smith

Published: October 21, 2024 8:30 am

Key Points:

• SAR technology enables Ukraine to target Russian forces through clouds and vegetation.
• Lower satellite costs let companies like Capella Space play bigger military roles.
• Using commercial satellites for defense raises ethical concerns due to rapid technological advancement.
• Answer your biggest retirement questions today!

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Edited Video Transcript:

Well, let’s keep the technology train going. I would love to now turn our attention to Ukraine and SARs.

This is a new technology. Tell me about it. What do we have to learn?

What is Ukraine showing us here about the future of war?

Sure. Well, I think we have to be clear. We have to be clear about how new it actually is.

And it actually isn’t new. It’s just become a lot more viable in recent years. I think it’s just a slight change.

So SAR stands for Synthetic Aperture Radar, which is a different type of satellite from optical satellites.

So that’s kind of your traditional orbital take pictures from space.

Now there are limitations to those types of satellites. Namely, they can’t see through clouds, through adverse weather at night, et cetera.

But Synthetic Aperture Radar, I’ll explain this in very simple terms, because that’s about as far as my expertise goes.

It sends a microwave signal to the surface and then constructs an image based on the feedback it gets.

It’s kind of like how bats see, if you will. So it doesn’t really see, it just creates a…

It creates imaging based on those signals. So SAR can see through clouds.

It can see through vegetation. It can see through forests. There’s basically nowhere to hide.

So what’s really interesting about Ukraine is, you know, I imagine we don’t have much knowledge of the climate there, but generally, and this is probably why Russia chose to invade in February, is that it’s usually covered by clouds at that time of year.

But the buildup was spotted not by a government entity, but by a startup called Capella Space, who tipped off the authorities that Russia’s really building up heavily.

There’s a heavy buildup, a concentration of Russian forces in Belarus and the Ukrainian border.

So that gave them the early warning and that helped them prepare accordingly.

So it’s just this, a couple of really interesting things happening here.

It’s just this technology becoming more viable. So SAR was first explored in the nineteen fifties, but the images that got back were really crude.

They tried to use it in Vietnam. It was no good. But over time it’s improved significantly.

And now the images are fantastically detailed and effective. It can keep track of moving objects as well, which is really important.

It has a lot of civilian applications. So what Ukraine did, so they got that early warning, but another thing they did is they were gonna purchase some drones from Turkey.

Turkey decided just to donate them. So with that leftover money, they decided to purchase their own, let’s say our satellite, the people’s satellite.

And then they…

They used another startup, ICI, a Finnish startup based in California now, I think.

They got access to all their data and they’re using the people satellite to track and target Russian assets.

And it’s been used. And I think at this point, I looked at a report from August, twenty twenty four.

So this number will be even higher now, but it’s been used in over fifteen hundred successful attacks on Russian troops, armor and other targets.

So it just overcomes a lot of the limitations of traditional optical satellites at a fraction of the cost.

And then the other aspect of sort of these startups getting involved in space more and more is because the cost of launching a satellite has plummeted in the last sort of ten to fifteen years.

So private commercial interests are getting more and more involved in the so-called space economy, which is growing exponentially year on year.

uh in twenty twenty between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three the number of satellites increased by thirty five percent so you can just see at that rate and the rate technology is improving just how this aspect of war we probably didn’t consider very much in the you know before the conflict began just how this another aspect of reconnaissance surveil and excuse me another really important aspect of sar is you can use it around the clock you know it doesn’t matter what things look like on the ground they can see everything

It’s an absolutely incredible development.

You can’t attribute this too much to one person, but the individual whose name keeps coming up in my mind here is Elon Musk and just how much he’s changed the terrain, not just with giving SpaceX satellite to Ukraine, but also the commercial viability of launching satellites, thus lowering the prices of them, making these technologies a lot more viable and accessible.

And also what we talked about earlier, which is the Space Force and one of their edicts being to manage the satellites in space.

And that SpaceX, I believe, now has more satellites than any nation on Earth.

So it’s just certainly not a direct player here, but it’s hard not to see sort of the impact and fingerprints of Elon Musk and his companies and technology on the terrain here.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think it’s, I wouldn’t really attribute to one individual, but yeah, as you say, I think if I saw the data a couple of days ago, I think it’s something like the majority now of orbital assets in space are from commercial interest.

And that actually raises a really interesting ethical question.

You know, by the terms of the Geneva Convention, attacking commercial assets and objects is a war crime.

But if those commercial objects are being used for military purposes, do they then become legitimate military targets?

That is something that we’re going to have to and AI in warfare actually just brings up a lot of ethical questions that we’re going to have to consider in the future.

Another one which I meant to mention when we were talking a little earlier is just the decision to employ lethal force.

we talked about these fleeting opportunities if a target presents itself do we have time to wait for you know the right authorization or do we just allow a drone a loitering munitions drone or something along those lines to target and eliminate a threat before it threatens you know the soldiers on the ground for example

um right now the the idea is that lethal force can only be if it’s given authorization by a human commander, but other nations might not have those qualms. So it becomes incredibly dangerous not to develop that capability.

So that’s, again, something. And the other problem is because technology is moving so fast that it’s outpacing regulation.

So you might have a set of rules today that will become completely obsolete in a couple of years based on vast improvements in technology.

So that’s something that is going to have to be revised and considered a lot.

And if there’s one thing that we can see today is that moving quickly in regulations isn’t something that happens an awful lot.

So that might be a real area to be concerned with.

in the future

yeah and it’s it’s you know unfortunately the the rules of war are constantly being rewritten not by not by um consensus but by reality and you know different different tolerances for what the rules of war may be so these are questions that you know nations are not just asking but will probably regrettably have to answer soon enough

um just because of the way you know conflict and warfare is changing

yeah