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Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

newscientist.com

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Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#161

Post by spwa4 »

Timon3 wrote: post #152
yostrovs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe wouldn't spend the agreed 2% of GDP on the military. Many presidents for many years tried to make them comply with the agreement, but they just ignored it. It was thought better to spend on the healthcare of the public and mock Americans for not having universal government healthcare. Many people in countries in Europe, like Spain and Ireland, that effectively don't have militaries, are still laughing and mock…

Which agreement are you referring to? The commonly cited 2% agreement that I'm aware of was for 2025 - which all members reached. When was Europe ever non-compliant?

It's part of the conditions for NATO membership. Oh and to have 4% as a target.

Of course they have renegotiated, and so now the target is 2% by 2027, with all historical arrears forgiven, and several countries have already publicly announced they agreed to it, won't do it (Ireland and Spain I'm aware of, I doubt they're the only ones)

You could also see this as most countries joining, promising to do this starting in 1949. Not even in the first years did most countries do this (except France). So most countries are let's generously say 1% of GDP in arrears, for 75 years now ...

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#163

Post by Timon3 »

spwa4 wrote: post #161
Timon3 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which agreement are you referring to? The commonly cited 2% agreement that I'm aware of was for 2025 - which all members reached. When was Europe ever non-compliant?

It's part of the conditions for NATO membership. Oh and to have 4% as a target. Of course they have renegotiated, and so now the target is 2% by 2027, with all historical arrears forgiven, and several countries have already publicly announced they agreed to it, won't do it (Ireland and Spain I'm aware of, I doubt they're the only ones) You could also see this as most countries joining, promising to do this starting i…

> It's part of the conditions for NATO membership. Oh and to have 4% as a target.

Could you please share where the 2% were defined in the requirements since 1949, and where the 4% are currently defined?

As I already stated, the 2% requirement I'm aware of was negotiated in 2014, to be reached by the end of 2024. If this is indeed where the 2% come from, it's obviously completely ridiculous to act like the member countries didn't meet the requirements - it wasn't a requirement of the treaty they signed!

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#164

Post by The_President »

triage8004 wrote: post #141
adolph wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like a very cool option and effort. Like the Chinese balloons that overflew the US in the last (few?) years, it would likely be challenging to shoot down. Otoh, it might cause some diplomatic disagreements about overflight. There are a number of competing theories in international law, with varying criteria, to delineate the upper limit delineating airspace versus outer space. This debate is unsettled. [0]…

Found those balloons very strange, hope they were up to something nice

Probably silently dispersing an exothermic surprise.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#165

Post by The_President »

ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #113
polalavik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't get why more folks aren't just going for the much cheaper option like this https://www.solaris-suborbital.space/

Because they will be destroyed immediately

They won’t be shot down over land without debris falling to the ground.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#166

Post by sigmoid10 »

emkoemko wrote: post #131
sigmoid10 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of st…

whats the issue with that? US just cloned the Iranian drone.... all countries do this

Anyone who has seen a picture of that drone could copy it. Heck, I bet DJI or similar could make a better version just by looking at it if they really wanted to. The drone markt is super saturated with cheap, practical components. But copying a self landing rocket is simply not possible without knowing a ton of internal details that you will never get from watching videos of it.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#167

Post by kyboren »

cameldrv wrote: post #112

I think also underappreciated is that Starlink can be used for purposes other than communication. It's already physically capable of acting as a giant radar, and SpaceX has gotten a missile tracking contract, and the E-7 wedgetail radar plane has been cancelled, which the DoD had publicly said was because it is obsolete given what's possible from space. It could be that they're planning on launching another radar con…

> they're planning on launching another radar constellation

They have been launching, continue to launch, and are planning to launch that and much more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proliferated_Warfighter_Space_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#168

Post by emkoemko »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #166
emkoemko wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whats the issue with that? US just cloned the Iranian drone.... all countries do this

Anyone who has seen a picture of that drone could copy it. Heck, I bet DJI or similar could make a better version just by looking at it if they really wanted to. The drone markt is super saturated with cheap, practical components. But copying a self landing rocket is simply not possible without knowing a ton of internal details that you will never get from watching videos of it.

"Anyone who has seen a picture of that drone could copy it." and yet they bragged about taking one and reverse engineering it to make a clone.... so your saying US of A couldn't copy it by picture alone? it took them this long to get a intact one to clone?

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#169

Post by AngryData »

kolinko wrote: post #130
bluGill wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can build it in a few years though. It takes money and can be done overnight but there is nothing about that that costs 10 years. 10 years got to the moon - from a much lower base. 10 years means you are starting with college graduates and building it from no previous experience - or you already have a lot but only are putting minimal budget into improving.

Apollo mission was a national mobilisation project that's size happened once/twice in a century. And it still took 10 years. There is no willpower to do that right now in EU. Right now we, in EU, plan to have first reusable vehicles (Ariane Next) in around 10 years - around 2035. And that is for the first vehicles, not for scaling up the production.

The Apollo mission was also starting from way behind what you would start with today though. Any aerospace engineer grad today has decades of science and engineering to stand upon.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#170

Post by AngryData »

palmotea wrote: post #53
jmyeet wrote: post #26

There's a deeper message here. I believe that countries around the world are moving towards a stance that the US is an unreliable partner and that their national security depends on not being reliant upon the US. An obvious place for this is that I think the EU will follow China's stance on not wanting to be beholden to US tech companies. The EU will bootstrap this by requiring EU government services to be hosted on…

> There's a deeper message here. I believe that countries around the world are moving towards a stance that the US is an unreliable partner and that their national security depends on not being reliant upon the US. That's not a bad thing, because the EU has been a mooch since the end of the Cold War, at least. It's unfortunate it took two terms of Trump for them to finally chance their attitude.

I don't believe they are a mooch at all. But when your biggest ally, and potentially most powerful adversary, becomes unreliable, a change in military policy and funding should be expected. If the EU started talking about invading, would you not reevaluate your military position to ensure you will be safe?
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