The Russians installed Starlink on the Shahed, making the drone multi-functional

Defense forces destroyed a Shahed-136 equipped with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications during a Russian night attack on September 25.

Journalists received photos showing that the UAV was equipped with Starlink. You can also see the satellite dish, on which the serial numbers remained. This should allow to investigate the supply channels of the Starlink terminal.

Journalists note that such a modification of the Shahed was only a “matter of time”, since the Russians had previously experimented with 4G modems with Ukrainian SIM cards.

And this is a means of receiving feedback from the drone and the possibility of transmitting information from it and changing the flight task at any distance. That is, the transformation of Shahed into a reconnaissance tool.

Such a “communication” may be necessary for the Russians in order to transmit collected information, for example, collected by radio technical means about the positions of Ukrainian air defense.

If the drone is equipped with cameras, an image. Also, thanks to Starlink and the installed camera, the Russian Federation can use the Shahed as an extremely long-range barrage munition with the ability to scout and destroy even moving targets.

The choice of the Shahed platform for such purposes may be related to its capabilities in terms of a flight range of about 2,000 km and a fairly significant free volume inside the fuselage.

On the evening of September 24, Russian troops launched several groups of Shahed fighters towards Ukraine. An air alert was announced in a number of regions. In the Kyiv region, the Air Defense Forces worked.