Chinese military researchers have called for the development of a "hard
kill" weapon to destroy Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system if it
threatens China's national security.
The researchers drew attention to Starlink's "huge potential for military
applications" and the need for China to develop countermeasures to surveill,
disable or even destroy the growing satellite megaconstellation. Their paper
was published last month in the journal China's Modern Defence Technology. A
translated copy of the paper is available here.
Starlink is a broadband satellite internet network developed by Musk's
SpaceX company that aims to beam internet access to customers anywhere in
the world (as long as they have a Starlink satellite dish to connect to the
satellites). Since the first Starlink satellites were launched in 2019,
SpaceX has put more than 2,300 of them into low-Earth orbit, and the company
plans to send up to 42,000 satellites into space to form a gigantic
megaconstellation.
The Chinese researchers were particularly concerned by the potential
military capabilities of the constellation, which they claim could be used
to track hypersonic missiles; dramatically boost the data transmission
speeds of U.S. drones and stealth fighter jets; or even ram into and destroy
Chinese satellites. China has had some near misses with Starlink satellites
already, having written to the U.N. last year to complain that the country's
space station was forced to perform emergency maneuvers to avoid "close
encounters" with Starlink satellites in July and October 2021.
"A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some
Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation's
operating system," the researchers, led by Ren Yuanzhen, a researcher at the
Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications, which is part of the
Chinese military's Strategic Support Force, wrote in the paper. Hard and
soft kill are the two categories of space weapons, with hard kill being
weapons that physically strike their targets (like missiles) and soft kill
including jamming and laser weapons.
China already has multiple methods for disabling satellites. These include
microwave jammers that can disrupt communications or fry electrical
components; powerful, millimeter-resolution lasers that can nab
high-resolution images and blind satellite sensors; cyber-weapons to hack
into satellite networks; and long-range anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles to
destroy them, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. But the researchers say that these measures, which are effective
against individual satellites, won't be enough to scuttle Starlink.
"The Starlink constellation constitutes a decentralised system. The
confrontation is not about individual satellites, but the whole system," the
researchers wrote. The researchers also outlined how an attack on the
Starlink system would require "some low-cost, high-efficiency measures."
Exactly what these measures could be remains unclear. The researchers
propose that China should build its own spy satellites to better snoop on
Starlink; find new and improved ways to hack its systems; and develop more
efficient methods to down multiple satellites in the network. This could
potentially mean the deployment of lasers, microwave weapons or smaller
satellites that could be used to swarm Starlink's satellites. China is also
looking to compete with Starlink directly through the launch of its own
satellite network. Called Xing Wang, or Starnet, it also aims to provide
global internet access to paying customers.
Starlink has been used for military purposes before. Just two days after
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister
Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Twitter asking Musk to deploy more Starlink
satellites to the country. Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos,
Switzerland, on May 24, Fedorov said that SpaceX has so far provided more
than 12,000 Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine, while adding that "all
critical infrastructure [in Ukraine] uses Starlink."
Earlier this month, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter (opens in new tab) that
Russia had made multiple signal-jamming and hacking attempts on Starlink. A
note from Dmitry Rogozin, the director of the Russian space agency
Roscosmos, to Russian media also appeared to threaten Musk, accusing him of
supplying "militants of the Nazi Azov battalion" with "military
communication equipment" and claimed that Musk would be held accountable.
Musk responded by writing (opens in new tab) on Twitter, "If I die under
mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya."
China may be looking at alternative ways to counter Starlink because ASAT
missiles create hazardous conditions for all nations operating in space.
Explosions in orbit are dangerous not just on their own, but also because of
the many thousands of debris pieces they create (ranging from
basketball-size to as small as a grain of sand). This space shrapnel has the
potential to cause serious damage to satellites. In November 2021, a Russian
anti-satellite missile test blew up a defunct Soviet-era spy satellite in
low-Earth orbit and created a debris field of at least 1,632 pieces that
forced U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station to hide in
their docked capsule, according to a U.S. Space Force database of orbital
objects.
The U.S., China, India and Russia have all carried out ASAT tests in the
past, creating space junk in the process. The U.S. announced a ban on
further ASAT tests in April. In October 2021, Chinese scientists claimed to
have designed a way to avoid the debris problem with an explosive device
that could be packed inside a satellite's exhaust nozzle, safely blowing up
the satellite without making any mess and in a way that could be mistaken
for an engine malfunction.
According to a recently released report from the U.S. Department of Defense,
China has more than doubled its number of intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) satellites since 2019, from 124 to 250. At the
beginning of 2022, China's total number of satellites, including non-ISR
ones, was 499, second only to the United States' 2,944, of which Starlink
makes up more than 2,300, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Originally published on
Live Science.