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Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

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Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#151

Post by WalterBright »

dev1ycan wrote: post #114

We are already in some sense past the threshold of sats required for a potential civlizational collapse that would be caused by the loss of access to space. There are way too many sattelites, starlink militarizing means it's a viable target now for enemy nations, any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump, let's not even menti…

> any one of them taking out a couple sats and causing debris would cause a chain reaction that would effectively turn space into a dump

You may not realize how big space is relative to the size of a few sats.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#152

Post by 0_____0 »

wmf wrote: post #109
redgridtactical wrote: post #101

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…

Isn't virtually all military hardware and software single-sourced? Ultimately they trust the supplier and have good contracts. I imagine the US military is migrating to Starshield over time where they have a better SLA.

Military connectors (e.g. MIL-STD-38999) are deeply multi sourced, like you can buy compatible connector sets from Souriau, Amphenol, ITT Cannon, some others. So it depends.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#153

Post by syntaxing »

nine_k wrote: post #68
syntaxing wrote: post #48

I noticed this the other day with the Anthropic upholding its redline. I think this is the first time in history where consumer tech exceeds military tech. Historically, it was always military tech trickles down to consumer.

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.

I argue that it’s different. Ukrainian military needed this to adapt to the warfare. The US has plenty of means to bomb people (look at Iran) with or without consumer drones. Our military does not have any native LLM capabilities.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#154

Post by nradov »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #74
GorbachevyChase wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a completely unfounded conspiracy theory, but I think it’s a fun one. I think Elon Musk is running these companies the same way that he is a top ranked Diablo player. He just plays one on TV. The decision makers in the military industrial complex pushed black programs into a group of private company so they could scale and cut red tape while shedding contractors with really serious performance problems. So no…

Conspiracy theories aren't very productive. But the one thing that continues to bother me is how there is no great explanation for why TSLA is still worth much. It's a shrinking car company that is failing to execute at FSD and says it's going to make humanoid robots instead of cars. There is no good reason TSLA should be valued any more than 10% of its current valuation, and even that would be rich. There is a fine…

I think the notion of a cryptocurrency treasury company is idiotic but Strategy (MicroStrategy) is an audited public company. If you want to know how they're solvent then you can literally just read their financial statements.

https://www.strategy.com/financial-documents

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#155

Post by lostlogin »

phpnode wrote: post #59
wmf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a meme but for those at home the whole point of a war is to cross over the front line into the opponent's territory and capture it. If your comms are disabled when you cross the front you can't really fight. So "just disable Starlink within Russian territory" does not solve anything.

You can have a hybrid approach - deny access in that area by default but have a secure way to whitelist specific terminals for short periods (mission duration)

So Starlink ‘Offence’ could be an upsell on a basic ‘Defence’ plan.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#156

Post by redgridtactical »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #137
redgridtactical wrote: post #101

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…

> simply because the commercial stuff is more usable and gets updated faster. 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…

Had no idea about that, went down a rabbit hole researching it. It's a pattern that keeps repeating: by the time mil-spec hardware ships, the commercial equivalent is two generations ahead.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#157

Post by nradov »

redgridtactical wrote: post #134
nradov wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's valid and definitely changes the risk profile if the military constellation is operationally separate. Though the civilian network is still a force multiplier in many cases, which puts it in the targeting calculus for adversaries regardless of whether troops depend on it directly.

Irrelevant. Only China will have the capability to target satellites to any significant extent, and if it comes to a real war with them then we're probably all dead anyway.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#158

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

wmf wrote: post #150
redgridtactical wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LEO is pretty expensive. Smaller countries might be better off with cheaper Astranis GEO satellites.

There's other interesting middle ground options, like O3b's equatorial MEO ring, that has coverage similar to GEO as far as latitudes go, but better latency.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#159

Post by dmix »

redgridtactical wrote: post #101

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…

> The vendor becomes a strategic chokepoint, and there's no precedent for how that plays out in a peer conflict

This describes Boeing and lots of other firms

The US has also done lots of protectionism for a bunch of monopolistic businesses out of (alleged) national security interests.

Re: Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)

#160

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #141
siliconc0w wrote: post #22

It's not great that they found starlink terminals on Russian drones (they've since tried to lock them down more). These should be export controlled and geo-locked as they are arguably much more powerful than any missile.

How does radio transmission with fast moving targets work (including LTE on phone), doesnt the doppler effect shift the frequencies of all radio waves?

Yup, it shifts but it's a minor shift and easily handled in the receiver. Receivers already need a little ability to tune the carrier frequency to account for ordinary variations in the circuits. From memory GPS's doppler shift is on the scale of a single digit khz, so Starlink's probably double that. A few khz of shift is no big deal for ghz carriers.
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