>Unfortunately for the researchers, with 2,400 satellites in orbit, taking out Starlink would be quite difficult to accomplish as the system is extensive enough to continue working even with some satellites missing.

Except for the fact the system is almost entirely dependent on a pretty modest number of static ground stations, and for the more important fact that due to lack of serious polar coverage the system is militarily near-useless. This is a PR piece masquerading as a research paper.

what's the polar coverage for?

Of course. :-)

Well played, sir

The system can use ground stations anywhere in the world. There's lots of them to spread the load, and give local connectivity (eg. you want a UK connection to use a UK base station).

So, satellites over China could use base stations in the USA without any real issue. You just get more latency.

Even with satellite-to-satellite links, you can conceptualise the aggregate throughput of the starlink network as the sum of the throughput to its available ground stations. The point is you don't need a mechanism to blow up or disable thousands of LEO satellites to compromise the constellation, you need a mechanism to blow up or disable at most a few hundred very-much-civilian and very-well-mapped ground stations. Or the network links they depend on, or the google bit barns they're connected to and so on and so on.

This is a capability that already exists in many forms, and effectively guarantees that were things to get a bit warry Starlink would have no more strategic significance than any of the other SATCOM systems already in use.

Or in the simplest terms the Chinese don't really need a new ability to destroy Starlink, because they already have half a dozen choices in how they could do it.

While this is true, attacking a single ground station in another country's territory is likely to come with some rather severe political ramifications, and that's putting it mildly. This is likely the reason why Russia hasn't targeted ground stations for Starlink in Poland (which is where most of Ukraine's traffic is currently being routed).

Attacking a ground station and blowing up a satellite on orbit are both serious acts of aggression, likely to warrant similar levels of response. Hence the point that if a war broke out where the Chinese deemed it necessary to destroy American property in space, they'd not hesitate to do the much easier, simpler and cheaper job of blowing it up on land first.

Especially given degrading Starlink would not in any way impact any of the other numerous satellite-based communication systems actually used by the US armed forces and their allies.

Once starlink v2 satellites (the ones with satellite-to-satellite comms) are widespread, the obvious US Military application would be to strike a deal with Starlink to piggyback on the network without using Starlink ground station. Plane-to-Carrier, Boat-to-Boat, Drone-to-Drone or whatever they fancy.

Starlink shell 4 is at 97.6° inclination. When full it will provide polar coverage. I think there are few few satellites in shell 4 already but lower inclinations are getting priority because of population density. If the US DoD hands Elon a crate of money I am sure shell 4 will become a priority.

I'd fundamentally disagree. Starlink is militarily exceptionally useful on any number of different levels. For instance, there are a number of videos floating around of people driving around in civilian vehicles in Ukraine streaming with a smartphone.

From an intelligence point of view for recon purposes that's huge. Up until now if you were out on recon then you snuck in somewhere, wrote down or memorised important things that you saw (all of which the person had to be trained to do, because the significance of what you see may not be obvious) and then tried to sneak back to your army with the information. By the time it got to the people needing it the information may have been obsolete. If the person gathering the intel got killed before they came back, then no intel makes it back.

Now, the people who need to know can be watching as the information is being gathered . If the person gathering the intel gets killed before they get back then the intel has already made it back, and can be replayed at will. Entire legions of specialist intelligence analysts on the far side of the planet can watch in real time, getting far more from the information than one person could ever conceivably manage.

Now you'd think this could be disrupted by blowing away a cellphone tower. Which sort of works, up until somebody starts running a starlink service from a car lighter socket and connects their phone to it via wifi. And that's just the most basic use going; which is far from the full possibilities which have included fundamentally breaking Russia's attempts to impose information control on the Ukrainian population by bombing their infrastructure and breaking internet connections etc and so denying them access to anything other than Russia's propaganda in Ukraine. Starlink and a generator has been used to to put cell towers back online that have had their power and internet backbone destroyed. Obviously there is a performance penalty to pay there, but a percentage of something is better than 100% of nothing...

The bit about giving a population access to other sources of information in the face of government censorship in particular is probably causing high up people in China to stay awake at night; it potentially renders the Great Firewall of China useless.

That is militarily significant in the semi-symmetric warfare that has resulted from Russia's illegal acts of aggression in Ukraine, but only because Russia are unwilling to strike beyond Ukraine's borders where the ground infrastructure for Starlink is hosted and where the base stations are being sourced from. In a conflict between the United States and China where space infrastructure is deemed fair game there would be no such limitation.

>From an intelligence point of view for recon purposes that's huge. Up until now if you were out on recon then you snuck in somewhere, wrote down or memorised important things that you saw (all of which the person had to be trained to do, because the significance of what you see may not be obvious) and then tried to sneak back to your army with the information.

This is just patent nonsense. Do you really think this is how military reconnaissance is done? No satellites, no planes, no drones, not even any radios? Just a couple of lads with some binoculars, a pen and paper and hoping you make it back to the lines? Give over.

This is just patent nonsense. Do you really think this is how military reconnaissance is done? No satellites, no planes, no drones, not even any radios? Just a couple of lads with some binoculars, a pen and paper and hoping you make it back to the lines? Give over.

It's certainly how it was done for the last fifty thousand or so years at both tactical and strategic levels. Whilst today strategically certain people probably do have access to satellite photos, on a tactical level the blokes blowing up the tanks are quite unlikely to have direct access to satellite intel.

With the weight of decent long distance radios for infantry they were originally limited to one radio operator to a moderately large formation, with other people feeding back information to them. This is still the case with the currently fielded Bowman system, troops get a short range (practically line of sight) VHF system with a long range UHF system being held by the command element so it's certainly still the case that somebody radioing information is going to be doing it to the squad, not to HQ and you run the risk of Chinese whispers when relaying which isn't present with a video stream that HQ and intel analysts can watch.

The Ukrainians have been using people streaming with smartphones from cars apparently quite successfully and you can watch the videos floating around, probably because in a total war (which this effectively is from the Ukrainian POV) when you have conscripted 10+ million men then doing this is a militarily effective use of untrained manpower, which when you don't have weapons for, let alone planes, drones or radios.

It's another unexpected use and implication of readily available commercial off the shelf technology. Less useful than drones in many ways, but it turns things upside down in a similar way.

This is tip-top walty nonsense writ large.

May I congratulate you on your superior debating skills, and commend your point by point rebuttal displaying a high level understanding of the subject?

Or alternately it might just be an "Argumentum ad hominem" from an Anonymous Coward who knows that he's lost the argument. ;)

Attacking a facility in another (presumably neutral) country is an 'act of war'. Depending who they attacked they might face an more powerful alliance than they bargained for; an alliance that once fully deployed could trash the Chinese military rather quickly.

Also, attacking another country would be long-term economic suicide for China. Moving manufacturing will not be cheap or easy short term but long term is probably necessary to stabilize worldwide supply chains.

Gotta fight satellites with satellites here. Could be the next arms race. Fingers not crossed.

Fingers crossed when they are all up it won't look like there is a sawrm of flies in the sky

Gotta fight satellites with satellites here

I'm imagining some Chinese air force bunker - with an old Atari console and joystick linked to a massive wall covering screen. Using Asteroids as the user interface for a Chinese anti-Starlink satellite.

Trusting in the power of 18 year old gamer recruits, energy drinks and junk food.

The idea of a "Musk machine" sounds horrible, however you might interpret it.

Has anyone asked Amber Herd about her approach to the Muks machine interface?

"Has anyone asked Amber Herd about her approach to the Muks machine interface?"

Who would believe the answer?

Do you mean [1]an amber herd like this ? And I'm guessing [2] this is what you mean by Muk's machines .

[1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.shopify.com%2Fs%2Ffiles%2F1%2F2508%2F2556%2Fcollections%2Famber_a_grade_01fa3289-bab5-467f-8062-4aaffacd194f_1160x.jpg%3Fv%3D1551581277&f=1&nofb=1

[2] https://www.muk-elmshorn.de/html/sondermaschinen_en.htm

This means China will need upgraded surveillance systems to detect the fakes and, according to Ren, the ability to intercept Starlink signals to look for threats.

Translation: We need lots and lots of money to use on scenario development and (overly expensive shoddy) tech to accomplish our mission which we know exists.

Also, we have our own constellation and really would like to kill the competition. We need more buckets of research money to make plans to kill the competition.

Of course we help our military, of course, for an additional fee and additional gold plated buckets.

How unlike the defense establishment of our own free democratic capitalist society

There is no difference between countries and people when it comes down to money. Especially when excessive amounts are distributed, like in the military domain. Then it is just a requirement to know somebody who knows somebody who knows and knows who to know to know and knows...

But our response is based on a carefully calculated consideration of a possible threat made by sober democratically elected politicians chosen by an informed populace - not a jingoistic knee jerk reaction to some easily demonised foreigners and an appeal to our sovereign skies

China thinks that anything on or around the planet that is not under tight control of the CCP is a threat.

And who created "space force"?

Donald Trump. [see icon]

Next question?

>And who created "space force"?

Gerry Anderson ?

Wasn't it Charles Chilton? Writer (and producer) of Journey Into Space for the BBC in the mid-50s. Which a quick look-up is (at least according the Wikipedia) the last evening radio show to get bigger audiences than TV. Jet Morgan launches on his Space Force ship from Australia to go and sort out some nasty aliens on Mars.

He was also the producer for a bunch of The Goon Show episodes.

Well, it is. (To them!)

Historically it's been possible to get away with lying very easily. Just look at Russia; there is a massive difference in opinions between the younger types who have smartphones (& VPN's to dodge the great firewall of Russia) and the older generations in Russia who get all of their news from broadcast media controlled by the state.

It's getting progressively harder for a small minority to control information going to the majority of the population. Starlink holds the threat of bypassing the great firewall of China and making it completely pointless, which I suspect the CCP would see as something more than a trivial potential threat.

Russia's great firewall isn't very good - and they've barely done much to control the internet until recently. Wheras China have been pouring resources into their Great Firewall for a couple of decades now - and it's a hell of a lot more effective. Although not totally. But cheap satellite internet would completely destroy that effort.

Although I don't know how easy it would be to just jam the signals. I don't know what else that would interfere with.

Makes sense that they can shoot down or disable any satellite that crosses above Chinese territory.

The US would want to have exactly the same ability.

> military payloads to be disguised as Starlink machines and sent into orbit undetected.

This provides the obvious excuse for disabling satellites. Whether it is true or not, it could not be proved one way or another.

Though with SpaceX currently launching on pretty much a weekly basis I reckon the replacement rate for disabled satellites would be almost as high as the takedown rate.

(especially if many of those replacements were cheap and non-functioning decoys)

And then there is the question of "stealthing" satellites ...

"And then there is the question of "stealthing" satellites ..."

I'm sure astronomers would be very pleased by anybody who came up with a way to stealth starlink satellites! :)

Actually, the truth is the first victim of a war.

Surely the first victim of war is usually the poor border guards - standing by their stripey poles as a column of tanks suddenly approaches?

Unless you were fighting the old Imperial Japan. In which case their declaration of war was delivered to your fleet, in harbour. Then the embassy would handle the niceties a few hours later. Although admittedly in the case of Pearl Harbour that was by mistake rather than design and the embassy were supposed to give a few minutes warning.

The Chinese - a great bunch of lads!

....don't buy into this Cold War nonsense. "Us" (good) versus "Them" (bad). It is a road to nowhere -- we end up in a sort of hybrid between "1984", "Soylent Green" and "Idiocracy". Hardly the bright, Utopian, future we were promised all those decades ago.

Robot monkey butlers? With hoverboards?

I was promised thermonuclear war with the USSR

Living in Sheffield it was considered an upgrade....

Be careful of those monkey butlers. The WHO have just told us that monkeypox is spread by sexual intercourse - and once you start dressing monkeys up in human clothing you're going to tempt even more people to start doing it.

martinrusher,

In comparison to the Russian or Chinese governments most governments are good. The Russian and Chinese governments are bad, to put it in simplistic terms.

I'd be a bit more hesitant about calling us the good guys, because we sometimes do things out of self-interest that aren't good. And we also often talk the talk of being good but don't back it up by our actions. For example we eventually stopped the "genocidal" wars in the former Yugoslavia, but conveniently ignored the much more obvious genocide (on a much larger scale too) happening in Rwanda at the same time. And we're not exactly doing much about China's genocidal policies in Xinjiang either.

But in terms of a system allowing a population to live broadly freely, with reasonable amounts of legal and economic fairness, governments that respond to their citizens needs and a foreign policy that often does unrewarded good, and doesn't often do bad things to foreigners - we're living in a paradise never achieved before in human history. At least if you're living in a "Western-style" democracy, with liberal/free -ish markets, rule-of-law and other such fripperies.

If somebody actually started shooting missiles at satellites by the dozens, wouldn't we get into a Kessler cascade scenario rather quickly? I know that Starlink satellites are supposed to be in a low enough orbit that fragments will just deorbit, but once you start doing this sort of thing on any sort of scale, the sheer amount of fragments is going to be orders of magnitude above what we have now. Even if they eventually burn up, it would be problematic for quite some time. Plus, at least some of those have got to get pushed into higher orbits by the blast...

If you're Chinese, that's kind of the point. It's a "force multiplier"; take out a few and they they do the work for you. And within a couple of decades of your Special Military Operation being over, the skies are free for you to use to observe your population.

If somebody actually started shooting missiles at satellites by the dozens, wouldn't we get into a Kessler cascade scenario rather quickly?

Yes.

I know that Starlink satellites are supposed to be in a low enough orbit that fragments will just deorbit, but once you start doing this sort of thing on any sort of scale, the sheer amount of fragments is going to be orders of magnitude above what we have now. Even if they eventually burn up, it would be problematic for quite some time. Plus, at least some of those have got to get pushed into higher orbits by the blast...

While most satellites in a low orbit would deorbit in the timeframe of 5-10 years i'd imagine that this is going to depend on the size (and therefore drag) of the bits in question. One imagines that an intact satellite would deorbit faster due to drag than the same satellite reduced to debris. I'd imagine that smaller bits of a debris field even in a low orbit is probably going to have bits floating around in a degrading orbit in 30ish years time.

>I know that Starlink satellites are supposed to be in a low enough orbit that fragments will just deorbit

One of the reasons that blowing up satellites is such a brazen move on the international stage is that the debris from such a collision or explosion is shot out on a range of very unpredictable vectors. So while the original satellite was probably on a nice, well-understood arc eventually plummeting to earth, the remaining bits of satellite are going to be flying off every which way in a cone stretching from straight down into the planet all the way to escape velocity peppering all the surrounding orbits with bits and pieces of every conceivable size.

And we have practically no way to track most of it.

So, yes, we'd be screwed out of at least LEO for a little while.