The article translated below from the PRC journal Modern Defense Technology “The Development Status of Starlink and Its Countermeasures” discusses countering a military threat — more precisely military threats enabled by much faster communications — and what capabilities China would need to counter the Starlink constellation. No secrets herein, just a guidepost to what China will need to work on to develop the capability to disable that robust low earth orbit communications system. Stephen Chen of the South China Morning Post in his May 25 article “China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists” mentioned this journal article.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army sponsored online publication China Military Online on May 5th article “Starlink’s expansion, military ambitions alert world” also warned of a potential threat from Starlink. This website also links to the English-language website of the PRC Ministry of National Defense.
Multi-faceted penetration to multiply military advantages
While Starlink claims to be a civilian program that provides high-speed Internet services, it has a strong military background, as well evidenced by the fact that some of the launch sites are built within the Vandenberg Air Force Base and the encrypted interconnection between the satellites and Air Force fighters has been included into their technical verification tests.
As a matter of fact, Starlink has cooperated with American military many times. In 2019, SpaceX received funds from the US Air Force to test how well Starlink satellites can connect with military aircraft under encryption; in May 2020, the US Army signed an agreement with SpaceX on the use of Starlink’s broadband to transmit data across military networks; in October 2020, SpaceX won a USD 150-million contract to develop military-use satellites; in March 2021, it announced its plan to work with the US Air Force to further test the Starlink Internet.
When completed, Starlink satellites can be mounted with reconnaissance, navigation and meteorological devices to further enhance the US military’s combat capability in such areas as reconnaissance remote sensing, communications relay, navigation and positioning, attack and collision, and space sheltering.excerpt from “Starlink’s expansion, military ambitions alert world” by Li Xiaoli on China Military Online, which calls itself a website “sponsored by the PLA. “
In case any military conflicts occurs, the PLA would need to be concerned about many other satellite communications systems as well. See for example the Wikipedia article Defense Satellite Communications System.
Given the rapidly declining cost of space launches and the more compact high performance satellites being launches many at a time — sometimes launched fifty at a time — the anti-satellite attack problem is getting more difficult. Not to mention the difficulty in reaching and attacking satellites in higher earth orbits. Massive numbers of satellites could be disabled by nuclear or perhaps non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons yet those may disable the attacker’s own satellites as well as electric power grids and other terrestrial facilities as well.
Inexpensive satellite internet from low earth orbit satellite constellation might also be a threat to China’s ideological security — one of the top concerns of the Chinese Communist Party. China adddressed the TV satellite dish threat by cracking down repeatedly on unauthorized satellite TV dishes and finally, and more successfully, by marketing digital TV decoders that operate on a unique Chinese encryption scheme and banning the sale of decoders that can decode pernicious digital satellite TV channels from non-Chinese satellites. Some people too use virtual private network (VPN) software on their computers, something that the managers of the Great Red Firewall and local police seem increaingly to be cracking down on. People still can find some digital satellite TV pirate decoders no doubt — there is an old Chinese saying “For every measure from on high, there is a countermeasure from below.” As always, the language barrier and intimidation are the most important tools in the censor’s toolbox. Repression and countermeasures both come in waves and feed upon one another.
China, like other space-faring nations, needs to worry about the proliferation of satellites and space junk destroying other satellites including space stations. Space is very big and small object tracking is robut but still with so much stuff up there accidents will be more frequent. I hope people don’t have to be killed before something is done about it.. Private launches by US companies are approved by the US Federal Communications Commission because they need to use radio spectrum for their ground communications.
Likely some more robust and international control/coordination system will be needed as launch costs seem to be dropping rapidly and high performance lightweight satellites are being developed. So far private launches are mostly from the USA, but that will likely change.
An uncensored internet is a terrible thing. Geostationary satellites need a big antenna since they are over 22,000 miles up; low earth satellites are much closer and greatly reduce antenna and transmit power requirements. Terrestrial jamming could be difficult since users could aim their directional antennas straight up, rejecting terrestrial signals to a very large degree.
This article was taken down (the issue is still online but the article on Starlink on pp. 11 – 18 has ben removed. You can can access it via Dropbox. I usually copy or save a Dropbox link to interesting Chinese articles I find. They have a way of disappearing! If the link for the magazine at https://www.xdfyjs.cn/CN/volumn/volumn_20.shtml is not working, you can use the capture of the homepage for Modern Defense Technology is available on the Internet Archive.
If you are curious about the other topics discussed in Modern Defense Technology — such as satellites, remote sensing, methods to get drones to fly in formation, target tracking, unmanned ships and unmanned ships, navigation and target identification — you can take a look at the English language side of the website.
Table of Contents of the April 2022 issue of Modern Defense Technology on the English language side of the website.I looked around the Modern Defense Technology website and found the form that authors must sign — an Article Confidentiality Review Certificate 文章保密审查证明 certifying that their article is not giving away and secrets. I ran it through Google Lens->Google Translate.
I had a security clearance when I worked for the U.S. State Department. I remember my first security interview by an officer from State Department Diplomatic Security in 1991 (part of his previous job was following suspected Russian agents around as an FBI counterintelligence officer based in Philadelphia). One of his questions was “Are you in contact with anyone from the Soviet bloc?” I had to be completely honest so I said “I talk to those guys every weekend from my basement!” I had to explain that I am a ham radio operator. I got my clearance.
Interesting to see something of the security procedures of other countries.
Here it is:
The Chinese original text 文章保密审查证明 I saved on Dropbox. You can use it when you submit your article.
The Chinese military also worries about the possible use of undersea drones against them. I saw a 2021 Chinese press report about them: Sea Drone “Spy” Caught by Chinese Fishermen
For every measure from on high, there is a countermeasure from below.” 上有政策，下有对策 Shàng yǒu zhèngcè, xià yǒu duìcè
This article again reminds me of the old Chinese saying I just mentioned now applied to a potential military threat in low earth orbit: “For every measure from on high, there is a countermeasure from below.” 上有政策，下有对策 applied mostly to earthly conflicts, this saying applies to outer space as well! For an earthly take on this earthy saying, see Google Translate’s machine translation of the Baidu Encyclopedia article on this saying! A nice introduction actually to the difficulties party bosses central, regional and local have in managing vast, decentralized China.
No comments:
Post a Comment