Russia is hiding anti-Starlink jammers in parking lots and trailers on the front lines: Ukraine drone expert

A Ukrainian soldier operates a GARA long-range drone. Dmytro Smolienko/ A top Ukrainian drone expert says Russia is deploying more jammers to counter Starshield. These Volna Kupol Garant systems beam interference at specific satellites as they pass overhead. They first emerged in 2024, but Russia said this August that it's begun serial production of the system. Russia is rolling out more trailer-mounted jammers designed to prevent Ukraine's attack drones from connecting to SpaceX's satellites, according to a top Ukrainian analyst. Each jammer can provide point defense covering about 25 square kilometers, or about 9.6 square miles, said Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian presidential advisor on drones. "Russia has covered nearly all important sites in Crimea with this type of EW and is increasingly deploying it along the front line," Beskrestnov wrote on Monday on his Telegram channel. He said the Kremlin was deploying the systems to counter Ukraine's use of Starlink over Russian-held territory. Ukraine's forces rely on the military version of the SpaceX service, Starshield, for strike and deep-recon missions. Starshield, as well as onboard artificial intelligence, has been crucial to helping Ukraine control mid-range attack drones and receive intel from recon drones flying behind Russian lines. Beskrestnov advised Ukrainian drone pilots to look out for truck or trailer parking lots as an "ideal place" for Russia to conceal its jammers. "Of dozens of trucks, three to six may have the system installed. Also watch for small trailers attached to passenger cars," he wrote. "The complex can even operate from generators," Beskrestnov added, saying that Ukrainian drone teams could look for polycarbonate panels, plastic sheeting, or greenhouses that can obscure the jammer. The system mentioned is the Volna Kupol Garant, which targets the satellite instead of the drone or ground terminal. It uses dish antennas to beam powerful radio interference at individual low-Earth-orbit satellites, aiming to create a local bubble in which satellite links such as Starlink struggle or fail to work as they pass overhead, per ODIN, the US Army's public database. Ukraine reported Russia's first use of the system in Kharkiv in 2024, but it's been deployed in greater numbers since the start of this year, as Starshield has increasingly allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian-held territory with drones. In August, the Russian state media outlet TASS reported that serial production of the Volna Kupol Garant was underway to build more countermeasures. One jammer system typically consists of six trailers, each with two antennas. Ukrainian forces attacking jamming sites previously uploaded drone footage showing these trailers sitting neatly in two rows. But Beskrestnov said on Monday that Russia had recently developed versions that use only one antenna per trailer and was learning to spread them out and conceal them. Still, analysts believe one jamming system can target only a single low Earth orbit satellite at a time. Open-source trackers estimate that Starshield, which is owned and operated by the US, uses a constellation of at least 240 satellites. Read the original article on Business Insider

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