Chinese military specialists want their government to be ready to deactivate, if not completely destroy, SpaceX's Starlink satellites in the event that they pose a threat.
A paper, "The Development Status of Starlink and Its Countermeasures", was published in China's peer-reviewed journal Modern Defence Technology. The researchers emphasized Starlink's "huge potential for military applications" and the necessity for China to create countermeasures to monitor, disrupt, or even destroy the developing satellite megaconstellation.
The potential military capabilities of the constellation, according to Chinese academics, might be used to track hypersonic missiles, drastically increase the data transmission speeds of US drones and stealth fighter fighters, or even ram into and destroy Chinese satellites.
China has already reported near misses with Starlink satellites to the United Nations. last year to report that the country's space station had to undertake emergency rotations in July and October 2021 to prevent "close encounters" with Starlink satellites.
Ren Yuanzhen of the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications, the study's primary author, believes the Chinese military must be ready to respond to Starlink's development.
"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."
The specifics of these measures may very well be unknown. The researchers propose that China create its own spy satellites to better spy on Starlink, find new and improved techniques to hack its systems, and devise more efficient means to destroy several satellites in the network. This could imply the use of lasers, microwave weapons, or smaller satellites to swarm Starlink's satellites.
China is also planning to directly compete with Starlink by launching its own satellite network. Xing Wang, or Starnet, likewise aims to give paying users global internet access.
Starlink is a broadband satellite internet network developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX corporation with the goal of providing internet connectivity to clients everywhere on the planet.
Since the first Starlink satellites were launched in 2019, SpaceX has launched over 2,300 more into low-Earth orbit, with a total of 42,000 satellites planned for a massive megaconstellation.
Their paper was published in China's Modern Defense Technology last month. The paper is available in English translation here.
