Satellites and the Ukrainian War

The Russian-Ukrainian war took its place in history in 2022 as a military operation launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022 with the aim of "demilitarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine".  As of today, this operation continues. 

It is another fact that this century will be an important turning point in the history of wars due to the changing shape and scale of warfare. 

According to the British Telegraph newspaper, Russia has the fourth largest army in the world with an active military force of 900,000.  Russia has also spent heavily on the defense sector over the last decade. The Russian defense budget, which was 141 billion rubles in 2000, reached 3.1 trillion rubles in 2021. 

The strengths of the armies of the two countries according to Global Firepower's 2021 report:

Russia's army ranks second in the world.

Ukraine ranks 25th among the world's armies.

Russia, with a total population of 141 million, has 3 million 569 thousand military personnel and 1 million 14 thousand active soldiers.

Ukraine, with a population of 44 million, has 1 million 245 thousand military personnel and 255 thousand active soldiers.

The difference in the number of active personnel between the two countries is 759 thousand in favor of Russia.

Russia has two million reserve personnel. Ukraine's reserve personnel is 900 thousand.

In terms of paramilitary forces, Russia has 555 thousand while Ukraine has 90 thousand.

Russia's defense spending is 42 billion 149 million dollars.

Ukraine's defense budget is 9 billion 600 million dollars.

Ukraine's external debt is 130 billion dollars, while Russia's external debt is 539 billion 600 million dollars. In terms of external debt, Ukraine is 409 billion 600 million dollars better off than Russia.

On the other hand, Russia has 432 billion 700 million dollars in foreign exchange reserves, while Ukraine's foreign exchange reserves are 18 billion 810 million dollars.

Russia, which ranks sixth in the world in terms of purchasing power parity, has 4 trillion 025 billion dollars. For Ukraine, ranked 48th in the world, this figure is 378 billion 450 million dollars.

Before the start of the war, Russia had 4,144 aircraft, Ukraine had 285. 

Russia had 789 fighter jets and Ukraine had 42. The difference between them was 747 fighter jets. 

Russia, ranked second in the world in terms of global firepower, had 742 attack aircraft, while Ukraine had 25. 

Russia had 1540 helicopters, Ukraine 111. 

Russia had 538 attack helicopters, Ukraine 34. 

Russia, the world leader in terms of tank power, had 13,000 tanks. Ukraine had 2430 tanks. 

Russia had 27,000 armored vehicles, while Ukraine had 11,435. 

Russia, which ranked first in the world in terms of self-propelled artillery, had 6,540 artillery pieces, while Ukraine had 785. 

Russia had 4,465 and Ukraine 2,40 towed artillery. 

Ukraine had no aircraft carriers, while Russia had one aircraft carrier. 

Russia had 64 submarines, while the Ukrainian army had none. 

Likewise, Russia had 15 destroyers, while the Ukrainian army had zero. 

Ukraine had one frigate and Russia had 11 frigates.

Russia had 85 corvettes, Ukraine 0. 

Russia had 48 minelayers, while Ukraine had none. 

It is clear from all these statements that at the beginning of the war, Russian forces outnumbered Ukrainian forces by almost 3-4 times.

Since the beginning of the war on February 24, Ukrainian forces have inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces, which has been widely reported in the media. 

The Moscow ship, which was sunk by satellite-controlled firing of Ukrainian Neptune missiles and GPS guidance, was the Russian flagship in the Black Sea. 

It is not a coincidence that satellite and guidance systems were also used in this incident. 

What happened to Russia's inability to gain a foothold against Ukrainian forces in such a short period of time? 

The answer to this question can be found in the satellite imagery provided to the Ukrainian state by the US company MAXAR Technologies. 

MAXAR Technologies is a private company and not an official organization. Therefore, the imagery it provides does not constitute official assistance to a belligerent country by a belligerent country, which means that everything it does is normal. 

On the other hand, if a country helps Ukraine in an official capacity, it would be seen as helping a belligerent country, which is a case of taking sides. 

Moreover, today tanks, artillery and weapons are being supplied to Ukraine openly and openly. 

It is another fact that MAXAR Technology Company instantly detects all military movements over Ukraine and transmits snapshots to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and operation centers together with some countries.  

According to these instant maps, Ukraine instantly detects daily and instant changes. With this information, it focuses on counter-defense measures and prevents the advance of Russian forces with the modern weapons with high destructive power provided to it. Javelin and Nlaw anti-tank weapons are among these weapons. 

On March 7, 2022, the New York Times reported that the US and NATO had smuggled more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons into Ukraine in 6 days.  This is a terrible amount. 

Where people cannot find stones to throw, 17,000 Javelins or anti-tank missiles will destroy 8500 tanks with at least 50% success rate. That is more than half of Russia's 13,000 tanks. 

The bottom line is that for satellite systems to be successful in Ukraine, they require the internet. It is another fact that Russia will bomb a large part of Ukraine's electricity and communication network in order to cut it off in the war.

At this point, the MAXAR company has to somehow transmit the progress of Russian armored units to the Ukrainian army and civilian militia forces that can use Javelin and Nlaw, depending on satellite images. 

According to media reports, Elon Musk's Starlink satellite systems were also used by the United States to meet this Ukrainian need.   

The fact that British, French and US satellites were constantly collecting intelligence information over Europe and that Russia did not hit these satellites because they were not at war, but only damaged Ukraine's communication and internet infrastructure, was somehow solved through these private companies and provided Ukraine with the internet communication it was looking for, perhaps uninterruptedly, and instantly informed the instant movements of all Russian troops. 

Strategically, Russia made its biggest mistake by spreading all its forces across Ukraine, leaving its troops unprotected or exposed. Every unit armed with Javelin and Nlaw weapons somehow ambushed the troops and tank forces coming to them in their areas and somehow captured and destroyed these individual armored tanks, causing great damage to the Russian armored units.  It should be known that for the last two years, the civilian population has somehow received armed training in Ukraine. 

The fact that the season is winter and the terrain is muddy has added to the fuel and food problems of the Russian troops, which are advancing very fast and alone, the logistics and maintenance and repair operations for heating and broken armored vehicles, as well as the necessity of rescue. 

So somehow they were completely defenseless against the Javelin tanks and were hunted down. 

Satellite systems over Ukraine monitor every moving animate and inanimate object from moment to moment. This allows the satellites to be switched to thermal mode, detecting all people, animals and vehicles that are different from the ambient temperature, identifying them as targets when necessary, and after transmission to the operation centers in Ukraine, they were destroyed one by one by ambushing or immobilizing these targets by trained troops with Javelins. 

Russia will probably succeed in this war, albeit by force. But due to its strategic mistakes and its failure to calculate that the war will be waged under the control of satellites, it will win this war with heavy losses. 

The real lesson for Turkey from the sum of these events starts from this point.  

Turkey should plan multi-point or alternative systems instead of centralized systems with satellite imaging, energy diversity and internet infrastructure and work with all its might for this purpose. It should prepare the infrastructure of all these important systems, including transportation, according to this understanding.