China’s attempt to disable Starlink

When Russia launched a special campaign in early 2022, one of Ukraine’s first responses was to ask American billionaire Elon Musk to provide satellite Internet services. A few days later, thousands of Starlink terminals were delivered, helping Ukraine restore command and control capabilities throughout the battlefield.

The Russian military initially sought to jam Starlink signals and appeared to be successful. SpaceX then quietly updated the software and adjusted the satellite system, making Russia’s jamming measures ineffective. This is said to have caused shock to the militaries of countries around the world, including China.

Launched in 2019, Starlink is a low-orbit satellite network capable of providing cheap, high-speed and wide-ranging Internet connections, including remote areas. Starlink company belongs to SpaceX group owned by Elon Musk.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the US-based Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said Starlink operates more than 8,000 satellites, equivalent to two-thirds of the total number of satellites currently operating in orbit.

Lessons from the war in Ukraine pose an urgent question for China, which is how to prevail in the electronic warfare environment if an armed conflict occurs around the island of Taiwan, when the enemy can use a satellite network of up to thousands, capable of frequency hopping, adaptation and interference resistance in real time.

Chinese scientists recently published groundbreaking simulation research, providing the most detailed public analysis to date of how the country’s military could proceed to disable Starlink.

The research was published in the journal Electronics and Systems Engineering, conducted by a team from Zhejiang University and Beijing University of Technology (BIT). BIT is one of the leading institutions in the field of defense research in China.

In the article, the research team stated that jamming the Starlink system over a large area like the island of Taiwan is technically feasible, but only if a huge amount of equipment is deployed, for example 1,000-2,000 electronic warfare drones.

“Starlink has an unstable orbital plane, the orbit of the satellite constellation is also very complex, the number of satellites moving into the observable area constantly changes. Variations in space and time bring great challenges to parties who want to find ways to monitor or counter the Starlink network,” the study reads.

Traditional satellite communication methods require maintaining several geostationary satellites operating permanently above the equator. To block them, the Chinese military just needs to send stronger signals from the ground.

This does not apply to Starlink. The satellites of this system operate in low orbit, fly fast and are very large in number. The terminal not only connects to a single satellite but continuously jumps to other satellites, forming an interconnected network in the sky. As soon as the signal is blocked, the terminal will switch connections in just a few seconds.

Starlink also uses advanced phased array antennas and real-time adjustable frequency hopping techniques. Most are controlled remotely by SpaceX engineers in the US.

According to the research team, Starlink can only be countered by distributed jamming. Instead of using a few powerful jamming stations, they believe they should deploy hundreds to thousands of small jamming devices synchronized with each other in the sky, to form an “electromagnetic shield” covering the battlefield.

Using actual data from Starlink, the research team simulated the movement of satellites of this system in the sky over eastern China for 12 consecutive hours.

They obtained the signal strength transmitted down from the Starlink satellite, the terminal’s reception pattern, the propagation of the jamming signal from the ground to the sky and vice versa, as well as the resonance effect when the jammer attacks the same terminal from different angles.

The research team also set up a network of virtual jammers at an altitude of 20 km and 5-9 km apart, forming a checkerboard-like pattern in the sky. Each device emits a jamming signal of different power, to simulate real-life situations.

There are two types of antennas used. The first type emits a wide beam that can cover a large area, but the energy is dispersed. The latter produces a narrow, focused and powerful beam, but requires high precision.

The simulation program tests the signal connectivity of the terminal at every point on the ground. Under ideal conditions, using a powerful but expensive jamming source of 400 watts to broadcast a narrow beam, and placing the sources 7 km apart, each device is capable of suppressing the Starlink signal within an average range of 38.5 km2.

By comparison, Taiwan has an area of ​​about 36,000 square kilometers, meaning at least 935 jammers would need to be deployed to cover the entire island. When using a weaker but cheaper source of 200 watts and placing them 5 km apart, the number of devices needs to be doubled to about 2,000.

The research team also notes that these are only preliminary results, because Starlink still keeps some key technologies secret. “Future evaluation results will be more accurate if actual measurements of the emission model data of Starlink terminals, as well as experimental measurement values ​​of their suppression coefficients, are obtained,” the article reads.

In addition to building electromagnetic shields, Chinese scientists have proposed many other options to deal with Starlink, such as intervening in the product supply chain.

In research published in 2023, Chinese military engineers proposed building satellites that specifically follow Starlink, collect signals, and even use corrosive materials to damage their batteries or engines.

Other proactive options include attaching laser weapons to submarines to burn satellites in space, deploying small optical telescopes to monitor satellites, and creating fake targets using deepfake technology to fool the Starlink system.