131–140 of 263 posts
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Simple solutions: block all Starlink terminals that aren’t whitelisted upon entering Russian territory or Ukrainian conflict zones. This will prevent Russians importing Starlink terminals and then deploying them in Ukraine. Work with Ukrainians to whitelist all their terminals.
It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.
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That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their mi…
European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area. The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specia…
These “military starlinks” will be much smaller systems than actual Starlink. The German one plans for 100 satellites.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/airbus-te...
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That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their mi…
European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area. The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specia…
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Fair point on single-sourcing, but the difference is that Lockheed doesn't have a consumer business that creates geopolitical incidents on Twitter. Traditional defense contractors are purpose-built for that relationship. With Starlink, you've got a commercial network serving 80+ countries that also happens to be critical military infrastructure. Starshield helps on the SLA side, but the underlying constellation is st…
Starshield has a separate dedicated constellation and can also use the civilian Starlink constellation for certain purposes. This is not a problem. The US government has direct operational control for everything they need. No one of any importance cares about "incidents" on X.
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It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.
Why not? Assuming you want one of the sides to win, why would you not want your side to use every (ethical) means available to do that?
The dual-use problem with Starlink is really just the most visible version of something happening across the military. Phones with civilian GPS chips are increasingly used alongside dedicated mil-spec hardware, simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster. The real strategic question isn't whether Starlink can be weaponized - of course it can - it's what happens when military operations…
And this isn't a new pattern by any means. Decades ago the UK military had a plan to replace their old analog centric radio gear with a system that integrated voice, data, gps blue force tracking etc. They called it BOWMAN.
The initial versions were so bad everyone started calling it Better Off With Map And Nokia.
The defense establishment moves at a glacial pace and consistently under delivers vs the equivalent commodity commercial products.
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You missed my point. It's impossible to meaningfully control the export of physical terminals. But as I pointed out above, SpaceX has already been doing some geo-locking.
I did not. Whitelisting means Russia can not buy terminals in UAE and use them in Ukraine. Because the terminals in UAE are not whitelisted to be used in Ukraine. Therefore, it's possible to control the export of terminals.
And while geofencing + allow-listing for sure provide value in e.g the Ukrainian conflict, it's a weak protection compared to goods that are actually under strict export control (e.g ITAR), and will always have to be done after the fact. Russia could for example put Starlink on drones launched from the Baltic Ocean targeting Poland or whatever.
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Consumer tech "exceeded" military tech when the first consumer-grade FPV drones started destroying tanks and bombing trenches in 2022. Exactly as cyberpunk books predicted, the technology is so advanced that all you need to create a weapon is sold in a toy store.
weren't the first instances of that. you could argue that places like /r/combatfootage are the consumer 'tech' that leads some of this, but it wasn't 2022.