Interesting - Iranians leaders were recently in Moscow, and so Israel's increased military support to Ukraine in this manner suggests that Iranians have perhaps managed to strike some military / security deal with Russia.

More info on the HiSky system being discussed - https://defpulse.news/en/what-is-known-about-hisky-satellite... ... apparently this system uses a mix of LEO and GEO satellites, unlike Starlink which exclusively uses LEO satellites (which provides better latency). Starlink also has 11,000+ LEO satellites in orbit which allows it to provide unprecedented coverage, which is currently unmatched by any of its competitors. This is also what provides it an advantage in its military use as it makes it extremely expensive to jam over a territory. For example, over Ukraine-Russia (where operationally allowed) a Starlink terminal is always in range of, and thus can connect to, around 20-60 Starlink satellites. This makes jamming it quite difficult and expensive. ( EW vs Starlink: What Actually Works? - https://militarnyi.com/en/blogs/ew-vs-starlink-what-actually... ). That will be the interesting thing to study here with any alternative networks used for military application - how resistant are they to jamming here?

Also, one of the reasons that the range of Starlink is limited to only over Ukraine (with some coverage spilling over the Russian borders) is because the Russians bluntly threatened to blow up Starlink satellites over Russia. Musk also now claims that Ukrainians "bypassed" this by using civilian Starlink transmitters (which are slower for military use) over Russia (which he now claims to have "disabled" permanently, and apparent why Ukranians are exploring alternatives). Depending on whether the Israelis and Italians have given explicit approval for the military use of their network, So Russia's political response should also be interesting. If politicalthreats fails, we may actually see the first use of anti-satellite weapons in a real war, shifting the theatre of military operations to Space. After the advent of drone wars, this may be another game changer in modern warfare.

This is probably also why Russia is working to build their own Starlink alternative, as reported in the media. [1] Any sane country right now should be looking at Musk, one of the owners of the largest global satellite based communication network and how he changes his mind on who he will and won't support on a whim, and be saying to themselves that they too need an independent satellite network, if not a regional one. Musk is not a person who can be trusted.

Hopefully, if we get a proper left leaning president in 2028 we can nationalize SpaceX and Starlink and wrest control of these critical pieces of infrastructure out of the hands of a man who has gone full fascist (absolutely no denying that at this point).

Russia races to build rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink https://www.ft.com/content/423ca208-8e22-4fb3-a76d-b9c722fd8...

No paywall: https://app.ft.com/content/423ca208-8e22-4fb3-a76d-b9c722fd8...