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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)

#191

Post by pstuart »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #170
tw04 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No that Russia collusion conspiracy theory rubbish has been debunked.

It was effectively quashed but not debunked:

  https://www.cato.org/blog/mueller-report-faqs
  https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigation-education-project/other-resources/key-findings-of-the-mueller-report/
I could go on and on but I don't think it would make a difference. It continues to boggle my mind that the GOP, a party that for all of my life had been an enemy of Russia turned around and embraced it. I wonder why.

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

#192

Post by tbossanova »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #171
cwillu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you were a kid, did you stop listening when your parents said “Santa”, or did you keep listening in order to glean useful information from their propoganda, even knowing that Santa isn't real?

Were you under the impression the Chinese Communist Party has been telling you sweet lies only because they find joy in seeing your childlike naivety and wonder?

That’s it, you’re on my naughty list! —Santa

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

#194

Post by remarkEon »

WalterBright wrote: post #136
echoangle wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

War is not ethical.

Of course it is.

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

#195

Post by ExoticPearTree »

throwup238 wrote: post #176
redgridtactical wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design. NASA has the same problem and in the last decade or two they’ve been relaxing that requirement for less critical missions because technology sped up so much. For the military that won’t change until there’s an existential threat.

> There’s a structural reason for that. Mil-spec hardware requires years of data on the failure modes of components to properly design.

By now you pretty much know how it can break and what are the most common issues with hardware. No one invented a new type of EMP for example that can pass through the holes in a Faraday cage for example. The water in the ocean did not became ten times more acidic that hardware requires more protection.

A wild guess: you can strap an iPhone to a military grade radio kit to help with jamming and what not, and have a very usable product. Or whatever modern phone. You then swap them out easily and you are always up to date on capabilities. Cell towers are upgraded less frequently than phone hardware. Same thing with the military stuff.

I think a great part in this plays industry inertia and vendor and too much money that could be lost. “This is how things are done” and it costs $10,000 per screw because “it is certified”.

The recent war showed that you can use commercial drones with a grenade or two strapped to them in very effective ways. Not to mention the more “advanced” ones that you still go to the store and buy them.

We need more defense startups and a lot less red tape to iterate as fast as possible.

Until Starlink, you had hundreds of milliseconds of latency for satellite internet. Now it feels a lot more like you are on mobile data on a phone.

Incumbments had no reason to offer a better experience because there was no competition. Now they’ve been left in the dust because of Starlink.

The existential threat will be very instant when an enemy with no milspec equipment punches you hard in the face. And catching up will not be easy nor fast.

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

#196

Post by wmf »

nradov wrote: post #127
wmf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a matter of migration. The US military used Starshield from the start and never relied on Starlink for anything important.

Good point. I think I was mixing up the US paying for Ukraine to use Starlink with the US military itself using it.

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

#197

Post by ExoticPearTree »

jmpman wrote: post #180
stinkbeetle wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that Russia collusion conspiracy theory rubbish has been debunked.

“Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” - Mark Kelly Musk replied directly to that post: “You are a traitor.” Kelly fired back the next day: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understan…

> It seems like stopping Russia from being an aggressor is in the direct interest of the US. Why would Musk think otherwise?

He is entitled to his own opinions.

From a business perspective Russia is a bigger market than Ukraine for Starlink. And since have no political color, it makes sense for him to not be pro-Ukraine that much.

And lastly, what is in the interest of the state is not neccesarily in the interest of people and vice-versa.

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

#198

Post by pestatije »

jmpman wrote: post #180
stinkbeetle wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that Russia collusion conspiracy theory rubbish has been debunked.

“Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” - Mark Kelly Musk replied directly to that post: “You are a traitor.” Kelly fired back the next day: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understan…

because of the money...he puts more value on the money he can get than the interests of his adopted country

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

#199

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #182
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does the receiver know how to shift?!

All RF protocols have some provision for signal acquisition. It can take a bunch of forms but what it nets out to is the oscillator in the receiver can acquire the signal from the sender. A simple example of this is "pilot" signals or prefixes that have an easily recognizable structure and allow the receiver to align to the sender in the clock recovery sense. So the receiver needs a little extra tunable bandwidth and to run the messy intermediates through something like a convolution filter, but it can latch on easily. This is early days of radio technology, like mid century post war.

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

#200

Post by cryptonector »

nine_k wrote: post #94
icegreentea2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's exactly that thinking that CSIS was trying to check when they chose to translate and publish this specific article. They are trying to get analysts and policy makers to think through, and make an active decision on if they believe that China will treat military/militarized mega constellations as destabilizing in a nuclear/strategic sense. It's fair to decide that that is not major factor, but it should…

Even the best space comms system does not make your ICBMs invisible to your adversary, and does not allow you to shoot down your adversary's return salvo of ICBMs. Hence the mutually assured destruction is not going away, and the side starting an all-out nuclear war still cannot win. I don't see how anything what's available now changes this; do you? What might be destabilizing would be long-range hypersonic missiles…

I think the issue is that one side having an overwhelming non-nuclear, conventional advantage might push the other to a nuclear response in the event of a catastrophic loss in a conventional conflict. Imagine Chine tries to invade Taiwan and they are defeated so badly that the CCP might fall -- then perhaps a nuclear response becomes more likely.

However, I think this is not the case. In the end no one wants to reduce the world to ashes over losing power. But... well, I suppose there are people crazy enough to want that.

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