Potential military application of Starlink

stealthflanker

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Greetings.

So yeah, i believe everyone already heard about the Space-X's new ambitious plan for connectivity named as Starlink. This will involve thousands of LEO or V-LEO Satellites, forming a massive web of global coverage.

Two major points of Starlink seems to be of a great potentials for military applications, namely :
-Global/near global coverage
-Lower latency
maybe the third is Bandwidth as it works on Ku-Ka band.

Those three potentials appears to be very promising for things like :
-Realtime guidance of Unmanned platform or remote ISR.
-ESM/ELINT/Geolocation as the Satellites appears to enough numbers and baseline distance to form interferometric Direction finding or maybe even DTOA. Frequency coverage will of course be limited by the antenna.
-Realtime mid-course update and re-targeting of cruise and ballistic missile in flight.
-Connectivity to grunts, Starlink coverage can cover military bases and perhaps area of operations, high bandwidth and low latency allows more rapid and perhaps flexible command to be sent to the squad in the field.
-Ku Band non-cooperative Bi/Multi-Static radar for low altitude gap filler radar

Historically, those applications were handled by dedicated platforms such as ground stations, Satellites or specialized aircraft (e.g BACN). This involves millions of dollars of acquisition, launch and maintenance. Starlink if successfull seems to be very promising and not to mention *cheaper* somewhat. Potential terrorist organization might also utilize Starlink to provide them with "precision" strike capability, controlling UAV's and strike from 300 Km away.

So yeah what do you guys think ? Granted that like the GPS there are vulnerabilities, but the opportunity appears to be very real. Particularly with the ability to provide more than latitude-longitude and altitude.
 
Starlink would appear to be very vulnerable to Electronic Warfare though, including direct hacking.
 
Starlink would appear to be very vulnerable to Electronic Warfare though, including direct hacking.

Doubt it. As one could expect tighter security in this respect.

-----------
Anyway It started


Now it's a tools of coordination... Soon we might see it replacing BACN later we will see Predator etc be guided in realtime using it. Denser constellation.. if it materialize will expand the military potential into a massive Bi/Multistatic Radar.
 
A Starlink antenna operates during the Global Information Dominance Experiment 3 and Architecture Demonstration and Evaluation 5 at Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, Alpena, Mich., July 15, 2021. The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command in partnership with all 11 combatant commands, led the third in a series of Global Information Dominance Experiments designed to rapidly develop the capabilities required to increase deterrence options in competition and crisis through a data-centric, software-based approach. GIDE events combine people and technology to innovate and accelerate system development for domain awareness, information dominance, decisional superiority and global integration. The GIDE 3 experiment was executed in conjunction with the Department of the Air Force's Chief Architect Office as part of their fifth Architecture Demonstration and Evaluation event (ADE 5), and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

 
Well it seems the Ukranians are using quadcopters / octocopters, loaded with grenades and guided through Starlink, to harass the russians at night. A bit like the Po-2 in WWII: they fly so slowly they can dump grenades with maximum precision and minimal collateral damage. Except that, if the drone is shot down, there is no dead pilot. And those thing are dirt cheap.
 
Well it seems the Ukranians are using quadcopters / octocopters, loaded with grenades and guided through Starlink, to harass the russians at night. A bit like the Po-2 in WWII: they fly so slowly they can dump grenades with maximum precision and minimal collateral damage. Except that, if the drone is shot down, there is no dead pilot. And those thing are dirt cheap.

Source? I know we've seen the quadcopter grenade dropper thing (ISIS pioneered it in Iraq a few years back, but it's pretty simple tech). But adding a Starlink receiver seems unlikely. The antenna alone weights at least 9 pounds, which is all the payload of a quadcopter and then some. And that's without the rest of the Starlink receiver and power supply.

I think it might be this: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine-drone-unit-russia-tanks-war-2022-3

Which is different. The article talks about the drone operators using Starlink to communicate with artillery units to engage targets spotted by quadcopters.
 
Well I got it wrong and you got it right. That's the military application of Starlink I had in mind.
 
Well I got it wrong and you got it right. That's the military application of Starlink I had in mind.

No worries. It's still a remarkably useful capability to have on hand.
 
Elon….please….just…ease back…focus on your rockets, and pretend social media doesn’t exist…like I do.
 
Meant to post these a few days ago:



Elon Musk promises to fund Starlink in Ukraine ‘indefinitely’ (ft.com, subscription or registration may be required)
Elon Musk has said he will continue to fund the Starlink mobile internet system in Ukraine for free “indefinitely” following discussions with the Pentagon. The billionaire entrepreneur had complained this week that the service was costing his private space company SpaceX “approaching $20mn a month” and had written to the defence department requesting financial support. The Pentagon on Friday confirmed that it had been discussing payments with Musk’s company to ensure connectivity for Ukrainian forces, adding that it was also exploring alternatives. But in a sudden about turn on Saturday, Musk wrote on Twitter: “The hell with it . . . Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”

The Financial Times previously revealed that some Starlink terminals used by Ukraine’s military had stopped working in areas recently liberated from Russian occupation, raising questions about whether the company was blocking the service to some parts of the front lines.

 
Thought I had already posted this back in August, oh well:
 
Back and forth saber rattling this morning.


Russia warns West: We can target your commercial satellites

LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A senior Russian foreign ministry official said that commercial satellites from the United States and its allies could become legitimate targets for Russia if they were involved in the war in Ukraine.

[...]

"Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike," Vorontsov told the United Nations First Committee, adding that the West's use of such satellites to support Ukraine was "provocative".


White House vows response if Russia attacks U.S. satellites

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Any response on U.S. infrastructure will be met with a response, the White House said on Thursday after a senior Russian foreign ministry official said Western commercial satellites could become legitimate targets for Russia if they were involved in the war in Ukraine.
 
Starlink at sea hasten rescue of sunken ship crew in a world premiere:

Lessons learned
On the face of it, Raindancer’s remarkable story is the first Starlink-enabled mid-ocean rescue. Just as high speed onboard internet helped Vendée Globe sailors use Whatsapp and Skype to co-ordinate the successful rescue of Kevin Escoffier in 2021, so Starlink’s instant connectivity and the ability to post on social media meant more boats were quickly aware of Raindancer’s plight. But Rodriguez is keen to emphasise that the conventional rescue protocols worked smoothly, and rapidly. Having redundancy of communication systems is more important than having the latest innovation.

 
According to Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, in 2022 Musk blocked a Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea by denying acces to Starlink.
"How am I in this war?" Musk asked Isaacson during an interview, according to an excerpt from the book reported on by CNN. "Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes."
[...]
The report does not specify when precisely the incident took place, but last September photos circulated on social media showing a drone boat that had washed up onto the shore near Sevastopol, Crimea, the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Riding low in the water, the sleek black vessel has what appear to be two contact probes on its bow and a mounted video camera farther back that allows remote operators to guide it to targets.
From the CNN piece linked to by Businessinsider:
Musk, the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla and private space exploration firm SpaceX, replied that he was impressed with the design of the submarine drones but that he wouldn’t turn satellite coverage back on for Crimea because Ukraine “is now going too far and inviting strategic defeat,” according to Isaacson.

The unchartered territory that Ukrainian and US officials were in – relying on the charity of an unpredictable billionaire for battlefield communications – also led to a standoff over who would pay for the Starlink terminals last fall.

SpaceX had spent tens of millions of its own money sending the satellite equipment to Ukraine, according to Musk. And the company told the Pentagon that they wouldn’t continue to foot the bill for the satellite gear, as CNN first reported last October.

After CNN’s reporting, Musk reversed course, tweeting “the hell with it … we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
 
Last edited:
In an older news item, dated Thursday, June 1 this year:
https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...n-buys-starlink-ukraine-statement-2023-06-01/
WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - SpaceX's Starlink, the satellite communications service started by billionaire Elon Musk, now has a Department of Defense contract to buy those satellite services for Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
[...]
SpaceX, through private donations and under a separate contract with a U.S. foreign aid agency, has been providing Ukrainians and the country's military with Starlink internet service, a fast-growing network of more than 4,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, since the beginning of the war in 2022.
 

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