[HN Gopher] Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink
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Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink
https://web.archive.org/web/20260311145044/https://www.newsc...,
https://archive.ph/ZKkD3
Author : mooreds
Score : 79 points
Date : 2026-03-13 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| kolinko wrote:
| The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot -
| both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and
| without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have
| terminal similar to SpaceX's.
|
| (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a
| program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly
| behind we are.
|
| The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have
| first Falcon9-level flights around 2035 (!!!), and that was
| assuming no delays, so absurdly optimistic. Adding a few years
| for ramping up the production, 2040 is the earliest we can have
| _optimistically_ something like Starlink from 2020.
| db48x wrote:
| SpaceX will happily launch satellites for competitors. OneWeb
| has bought launches from them, for example.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Or at least they were while anti-trust still had some teeth.
| Trump's DOJ is highly unlikely to go after Starlink for
| refusing to launch for a competitor, let alone another
| nation's military.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| To be future proof for more administrations you don't want
| a monopoly at any step. you really want at least three
| competitors at minimum. Large companies in tech have
| realized this by now since the 90s. Recently TeraWave was
| launched by SpaceX due to the inherent risk (and this is a
| direct competitor to SpaceX. See
| https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/bezos-blue-origin-
| satellite-...
| fragmede wrote:
| What's confusing about that is Jeff Bezos is funding
| TeraWave to also compete with Amazon who is also
| launching their own Starlink competitor for satellite
| Internet?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| If you are good at making businesses then why not make
| more?
| db48x wrote:
| I'm not even sure that anti-trust laws come into it; they
| just want as many launch customers as possible. Better to
| earn some money off of a competing constellation rather
| than earn nothing, right?
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Can you explain what makes Falcon9 / Starship special (or
| needed) to launch these satellites? China, India, EU, Japan
| etc. all have the capability to launch satellites. So why is a
| Falcon9 / Starship a particular requirement?
| samrus wrote:
| Has to be the cost. A reusable launch vehicle is such a
| ridiculously better value proposition that it creates a
| discrete evolution. Some things just arent feasible to do
| without them
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it would
| be very expensive to emulate that without super efficient
| launching capabilities.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it
| would be very expensive to emulate that without super
| efficient launching capabilities.
|
| But does a military really need that many to get the
| necessary capability? Would a smaller constellation be
| sufficient, especially without competing civilian users?
| iSnow wrote:
| >But does a military really need that many to get the
| necessary capability?
|
| No. The German army wants a constellation of initially
| 40, and later just over 100 satellites. They do not want
| or need to replicate the massive Starlink numbers.
| mooreds wrote:
| Cost, maybe? It is one thing to ship up a valuable satellite
| (which they all can do). But to ship up 1000s of satellites
| (and keep doing it in perpetuity, because IIRC they don't
| have a long lifetime[0]) gets expensive.
|
| 0: Looks like 5 years. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-
| satellites.html
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| Another major detail is that SpaceX is simply burning
| _enormous_ amounts of money on this.
|
| Starlink's _revenue_ is comparable to the ESA 's entire 5
| billion euro budget, and it still looks like starlink is
| not net-profitable as a service. (And kessler syndrome
| avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower
| orbits)
|
| The chief problem "stopping" other countries from
| developing a starlink competitor is that starlink simply
| doesn't make all that much sense if your country is capable
| of basic infrastructure construction. Fiber runs are
| expensive but not _that_ expensive.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as
| a service_
|
| Starlink was profitable in 2024 [1] and should be
| materially profitable once V3 goes up.
|
| > _kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs
| with the lower orbits_
|
| This hits everyone. And it's not a serious cost issue.
| Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to
| be due to obselescence. And the propellant depots SpaceX
| is building for NASA tie in neatly if the chips stablise
| enough to permit longer-lasting birds.
|
| > _doesn 't make all that much sense if your country is
| capable of basic infrastructure construction_
|
| Infrastructure gets blown up and shut off. Hence the
| military interest.
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-much-does-starlink-
| make-this-...
| estearum wrote:
| From the PCMag article:
|
| > For example, although the Starlink subsidiary reported
| $2.7 billion in revenue for 2024, the same financial
| statement doesn't account for the costs of launching and
| maintaining a fleet of nearly 8,000 Starlink satellites.
|
| ???
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Later: "The document also shows the Starlink subsidiary
| registered a net income of only $72.7 million for 2024.
| The year prior, the subsidiary incurred a net loss of
| $30.7 million. However, the financial statement notes the
| subsidiary purchased nearly $2.3 billion in Starlink
| hardware and services from the SpaceX parent last year."
|
| Those figures, to my understanding, include cost of
| services and launch in COGS.
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| > Starlink was profitable in 2024
|
| Those are _revenue_ figures.
|
| > This hits everyone. And it's not a serious cost issue.
|
| That it affects everyone just makes the problem worse. If
| China or the EU does commit to a starlink competitor,
| there's even more crowding in orbit. Even more collision
| avoidance required.
|
| > Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to
| be due to obselescence
|
| That's the point. These things are not staying up long,
| and they're staying up shorter and shorter.
|
| The constellation is both expensive to build and to
| maintain. That makes it a lot of trouble compared to
| running a bunch of fiber once and having only occasional
| maintenance trouble when some idiot drags a backhoe
| through it.
|
| > Infrastructure gets blown up and shut off. Hence the
| military interest.
|
| The military interest is real, but it remains to be seen
| how much money they're willing to put up for it. Higher
| latency more conventional satellite internet will have
| significant cost savings in comparison.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What would the cost be to deny these orbital altitudes?
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| Incalculable.
|
| The cost isn't in paying someone to not use the orbit,
| it's that the busier a part of space gets, the more
| expensive it becomes to do collision avoidance and
| station keeping.
|
| What makes this impossible to calculate is that there's
| an unknown exponential involved. The more satellites, the
| more collisions that need avoiding. And the higher the
| chance that one avoidance will create new future
| collisions.
|
| At some point the space is simply so busy that collisions
| can no longer be avoided.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What makes this impossible to calculate_
|
| It's really not impossible to calculate, particularly if
| you're trying to cause damage.
|
| The answer is it's cheaper to shoot down individual
| satellites than try to create a localized cascade.
| Kessler cascades propagate too slowly, and degrade too
| quickly in low orbits, to be useful as a military tactic.
| In high orbit one could feasibly _e.g._ deny use of a
| geostationary band. But again, it's cheaper to just shoot
| down each satellite.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Those are revenue figures_
|
| And also net income.
|
| > _just makes the problem worse_
|
| Did you skip the part where it's not a serious cost
| issue? None of these birds are even close to being
| propellant restricted.
|
| > _These things are not staying up long, and they 're
| staying up shorter and shorter_
|
| Because they're being intentionally deorbited to make
| room for better birds. They don't _have_ to be deorbited
| as quickly as they are. But overwhelming demand makes it
| a profitable bet.
|
| > _it remains to be seen how much money they 're willing
| to put up for it_
|
| $70mm per year for 22 birds [1].
|
| [1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starshield-space-force-
| contract
| bluGill wrote:
| starlink has some travel niches where it makes sense.
| However not many cross the ocean. military where you
| can't trust the nearby infrastructure is the other big
| one. Disaster recovery where the local system is not
| working isn't big enough to fund anything though it will
| use whatever they can get.
| fragmede wrote:
| The cruise ship industry is $78B of revenue. He airline
| industry is $840B of revenue. Between the two, I think
| Starlink has enough customers crossing the ocean to be
| profitable, given how hard they drive down costs.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Because the Chinese govt doesn't have money to burn...
| tekla wrote:
| None of those countries (well probably except China) have any
| significant launch capacity to deploy constellations
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| India is already one of the cheapest service providers for
| such launches - _ISRO puts 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit_ -
| https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-
| successfully-... (They are ofcourse working to create a
| reusable launch vehicle too).
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Not true. The reason why they launched with India is
| because Russia got sanctioned.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The story I like to tell is about the Manhattan Project. This
| caused a debate in US strategic circles that set policy for the
| entire post-1945 world. Debate included whether a preemptive
| nuclear strike on the USSR was necessary or even just a good
| idea.
|
| Anyway, many in these circles thought the USSR would take 20
| years to develop the bomb if they ever did. It took 4 years.
| The hydrogen bomb? The USA tested theirs in 1952. The USSR?
| 1953.
|
| China now has _decades_ of commitment to long-term projects, an
| interest in national security and creating an virtuous circle
| for various industries.
|
| The US banned the export of EUV lithography machiens to China
| but (IMHO) they made a huge mistake by also banning the best
| chips. Why was this a mistake? Because it created a captive
| market for Chinese-made chips.
|
| The Soviet atomic project was helped by espionage and ideology
| (ie some people believed in the communist project or simply
| thought it a bad idea that only the US had nuclear weapons).
| That's just not necessary today. You simply throw some money at
| a few key researchers and engineers who worked at ASML and you
| catch up to EUV real fast. I said a couple of years ago China
| would develop their own EUV processes because they don't want
| the US to have that control over them. It's a matter of
| national security. China seems to be 3-5 years away on
| conservative estimates.
|
| More evidence of this is China not wanting to import NVidia
| chips despite the ban being lifted [1].
|
| China has the same attitude to having its own launch
| capability. They've already started testing their own reusable
| rockets [2]. China has the industrial ecosystem to make
| everything that goes into a rocket, a captive market for
| Chinese launches (particularly the Chinese government and
| military) and the track record to pull this off.
|
| And guess what? China can hire former SpaceX engineers too.
|
| I predict in 5 years these comments doubting China's space
| ambitions will be instead "well of course that was going to
| happen".
|
| [1]: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/china-want-buy-
| nvidi...
|
| [2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-
| explosive-...
| ciupicri wrote:
| > many in these circles thought the USSR would take 20 years
| to develop the bomb if they ever did. It took 4 years.
|
| Because some people committed treason and gave the technology
| to the Soviets.
| bluGill wrote:
| Some people will give it to china too. We have even caught
| a few (in other industries).
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, but _how_ they got it is irrelevant. They got it, and
| that 's what matters.
|
| China can (and does) do the same for current tech today,
| through whatever means.
|
| (Also, GP's comment directly said what you said; not sure
| what your comment adds to the discussion.)
| palmotea wrote:
| > Because some people committed treason and gave the
| technology to the Soviets.
|
| American big business is pretty much doing that every day,
| handing over technology to increase China's manufacturing
| tech level.
|
| Pretty soon China won't need it anymore. If the massive
| incompetence of the US government and business
| establishment is defeated, the the industrial espionage
| will start to go in the other direction. More likely is the
| US just declines, becoming little more than a source of raw
| materials and agricultural products to fuel advanced
| Chinese industry.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Because of the traitors, the Soviet Union has gained a few
| years, but the end result would have been the same.
|
| At that time, there were a few good Russian nuclear
| physicists, and they have also captured many German
| physicists and engineers.
|
| Actually I think that the effect of the information
| provided by the traitors was much less in reducing the time
| until the Soviet Union got the bomb than in reducing their
| expenses for achieving that.
|
| In the stories that appear in the press or in the lawsuits
| about industrial espionage the victims claim that their
| precious IP has been stolen. However that is seldom true,
| because the so-called IP isn't usually what is really
| precious.
|
| The most precious part of the know-how related to an
| industrial product is typically about the solutions that
| had been tried but had failed, before choosing the working
| solution. Normally any competent engineer when faced with
| the problem of how to make some product equivalent with
| that of a competitor, be it a nuclear bomb or anything
| else, can think about a dozen solutions that could be used
| to make such a thing.
|
| In most cases, the set of solutions imagined independently
| will include the actual solution used by the competitor.
| The problem is that it is not known which of the imagined
| solutions will work in reality and which will not work.
| Experimenting with all of them can cost a lot o f time and
| money. If industrial espionage determines which is the
| solution used by the competitor, the useful part is not
| knowing that solution, but knowing that there is no need to
| test the other solutions, saving thus a lot of time and
| money.
| kazen44 wrote:
| also, the knowledge about how a nuclear bomb works wasn't
| a secret. The way to produce one was the hard part to
| figure out. Without the espionage, a industrialised
| country like the USSR would have figured out how to
| produce an atomic bomb eventually.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within
| a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready
| to go".
|
| suborbital Yuanxingzhe-1 landed may 2025, and orbital Zhuque-3
| was really close to landing in December. Long March 12A also
| tried in December although it wasn't as close to success.
|
| So if China is 10 years behind, they've caught up. We won't
| know if they're 10 years or further behind for a couple years
| more, though.
|
| And while China may be 10-15 years behind on their Falcon-9
| equivalents, they're likely less than 10 years behind on their
| Starship equivalents.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| The first rocket may take off sooner than 2040. But Starlink
| is not just a rocket, it is a complete _business process_ ,
| with a launch regularity and price. A Starlink satellite's
| worth of space on a Falcon 9 costs 500k-750k. With about ten
| thousand satellites, which last about five years, this means
| maybe a billion and a half per year spent on the space arm of
| the business, not counting ground stations. If they had to
| spend, say, ten times this, Starlink wouldn't be profitable
| today. And that's pretty much reality: the Ariane rocket
| costs ~$100m to Falcon's ~$15m (nobody knows what Zhuque-3
| costs); I think cost per kg is 5000 vs 900. You could get it
| down to ~1.5B a year by narrowing it to just the latitudes
| overhead the EU, but then you cut the potential revenues too
| and have the same problem.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Sure but the Chinese military can easily afford that.
| jopsen wrote:
| > but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the
| same problem.
|
| How many starlink clones are there really customers for?
|
| Many people have fiber, and in an urban area you'll
| probably prefer 5G, if you can't get fiber or wired
| internet.
|
| Starlink is great if you live in the middle of nowhere, but
| few people do.
|
| Even if you could do a competitive launch cost, the number
| of customers is limited.
| db48x wrote:
| Starlink is equally great no matter where you live :)
|
| But you're right, in urban areas it should be possible to
| do better. If you can get 1Gbps symmetric fiber then get
| the fiber. Sadly in the US it is not always possible to
| do better than Starlink, even in urban areas. It's gotten
| better in the last decade, but many cities are still
| stuck with really bad options due to bad choices in the
| past.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| 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 state sponsored hackers? No chance.
| Liftyee wrote:
| Curious - Any sources? Looking at publicly available
| details and copying them might be intellectually dishonest
| if it was a piece of coursework, but this isn't an academic
| research project. Taking features from something that's
| known to work is the fastest way to get to something
| working.
|
| If there's actual smuggling of designs or trade secrets
| going on, I'd be more interested. But if it's just "the
| rocket looks the same on the outside", that's hardly
| "industrial espionage".
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Be serious, you don't really need a citation to know the
| CCP is using industrial espionage to advance their
| defense industry.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Sure, they're trying. But there's no evidence they've
| succeeded in stealing anything other than open source
| intelligence from SpaceX.
|
| There's a _lot_ of open source intelligence about SpaceX
| rocket designs available.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Be serious, do you think defense industry normally
| respects other nations' industrial secrets?
| mwambua wrote:
| Bloomberg's podcast "The Big Take" has been running an
| interesting series on Chinese industrial espionage called
| "The Sixth Bureau". Here's a link to the Youtube
| playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38L5UzLwt-s&lis
| t=PLe4PRejZgr...
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> China also had made industry espionage their way to go
| in these things._
|
| Few layman know this but France is one of the biggest
| industrial espionage players active in the US and Europe,
| after Israel of course.
|
| In fact, according to Wikileaks diplomatic cables from
| Berlin quote: _" France is the country that conducts the
| most industrial espionage [in Europe], even more than China
| or Russia."_
|
| Basically, every nation on the planet engages in espionage
| for its own benefit if they can get away with it. There's
| no honor amongst thieves.
|
| Singling out China as if they're the only ones doing it, or
| the ones doing it the most, is both naive and hilarious.
| bdauvergne wrote:
| Diplomatic cables are not a source of truth, they are
| heavily biased. The fact they had to be stolen does not
| give them more weight. There is a lot of bias in US
| governmental opinion on french technology that such a
| small country cannot be so advanced without stealing;
| opinion which started with the french nuclear and space
| program. My opinion on those discourses about France,
| China or the USSR in the past are just mostly propaganda
| from the US MIC to ensure continued funding.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Diplomatic cables are not a source of truth, they are
| heavily biased. _
|
| As opposed to...?
| cyberax wrote:
| > China also had made industry espionage their way to go in
| these things.
|
| They're even espionaging from themselves in the future!
|
| Dude, have you ever _been_ in China? They don't need
| espionage, they're now way ahead of the world in
| technology, except in a few areas like biotech research and
| semiconductor manufacturing.
|
| For the last decade, China has been having more engineers
| in _training_ than the total number of engineers in the US.
| Sure, the quality of Chinese universities is not that
| great, but the sheer number of them has its own power.
| noosphr wrote:
| I strongly suggest to anyone who thinks this isn't true
| to go to Shenzhen and then SF.
|
| One feels like the future. The other feels like you will
| get shot.
| standardUser wrote:
| China is a full blown superpower and it should surprise no
| one when they catch up to or surpass the West in technical
| feats.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I'd broadly agree that EU is pretty behind the curve. But I
| think China is probably only ~5 years max behind the curve in
| terms of Starlink.
|
| But in terms of defense needs, I don't think you actually need
| the thousands and thousands for reasonable returns. DoD/NRO has
| bought maybe ~500 Starshields
| (https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/03/26/spacex-
| starshield-...) from SpaceX.
|
| I think China is well within reach of being able to put up
| those numbers within a few years, even if they don't get re-use
| figured out (which I think they will within a 2-3 years -
| basically what SpaceX did from the first landing attempts to
| success).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| China did 92 launches in 2025. If they only need to put up
| 500, and if they can put up 22 per launch like SpaceX can,
| they have the capability now, let alone 5 years from now.
| polalavik wrote:
| i don't get why more folks aren't just going for the much
| cheaper option like this https://www.solaris-
| suborbital.space/
| jacobgkau wrote:
| There might be less societal objection to "satellites in
| space orbiting the planet" than to "planes flying
| continuously over the same area," even if both can be
| used for similar purposes. I'd assume it'd also be easier
| to disrupt suborbital systems like that than satellites,
| but I could be wrong.
| adolph wrote:
| 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]
|
| There may also be some technical challenges having to do
| with beamforming rf to the vehicle. Starshield like
| Starlink has the predictability of orbital vehicles for
| tracking. It would be interesting to understand how a
| ground station focuses on the solar glider.
|
| 0. https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/97801
| 992316...
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Because they will be destroyed immediately
| tristor wrote:
| All of that, and the funny thing is /that is the easy part/.
| Moving payloads to space is just incredibly expensive, but not
| fundamentally hard in the same way that post-launch
| coordination of satellite constellations and RF tuning to
| support things like mobile connectivity are (I can connect to
| Starlink satellites from my iPhone through T-Mobile).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Connecting to a cell phone and/or selling a phased array
| antenna that can track an object travelling 17,000 mph for
| $300 is crazy hard.
|
| But a military is going to be fine with an antenna that costs
| $3000.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm wondering if we will see a resurgence in direct to
| geostationary, It seems like it should be a lot easier to cover
| the planet when you only need a few satellites.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| India's ISRO already competes with SpaceX for these launches (
| _ISRO puts 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit_ -
| https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-successfully-...
| ), despite not having any reusable launch vehicles (reason -
| it's in the top 5 in space technology and just cheaper - _Why
| it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars_ -
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo ). Once it
| masters reusable launch vehicle technologies, it'll be hard to
| compete with ISRO on commercial launches.
| Bender wrote:
| Starlink's first customer was supposed to be the US Army. I am
| curious what requirements they did not meet.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| There is a separate entity, StarShield, that the US military
| uses. I think it's a fully separate set of satellites, but I'm
| not 100% on that.
| Bender wrote:
| You could be right. I got this from Grok:
|
| - The US military (including the Army) showed early interest
| in Starlink's potential, but this was exploratory rather than
| as the inaugural customer.
|
| - As early as 2018-2019, SpaceX received funding and
| contracts (e.g., a $28.7 million award) to study and test
| military applications of Starlink technology, focusing on
| things like aircraft connectivity.
|
| - In October 2019, SpaceX's President Gwynne Shotwell
| publicly mentioned the US Army as a potential future customer
| for Starlink.
|
| - In May 2020, the US Army signed an R&D/testing agreement
| with SpaceX to evaluate Starlink's performance for military
| field use over three years. This was a trial to assess
| feasibility (e.g., low latency, bandwidth in remote areas),
| not a full commercial subscription or "first customer"
| status. Actual field testing and pilot programs by the Army
| ramped up later (e.g., 2022 in Europe).
|
| - Starshield is SpaceX's dedicated business unit and
| satellite network designed specifically for government and
| national security applications, building directly on the
| technology and infrastructure of the commercial Starlink
| constellation.
|
| - While Starlink focuses on providing broadband internet to
| consumers, businesses, and general users worldwide,
| Starshield adapts and enhances that foundation for more
| secure, classified, and military-oriented needs. It was
| publicly unveiled in December 2022, though related work
| (including contracts) began earlier.
|
| I was probably conflating the exploratory articles with their
| intent to go that direction.
| kotaKat wrote:
| IIRC it's separate sats but same backhaul and they also
| leverage the same terminals?
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| That seems entirely plausible. I based my comment on one of
| Elon's tweets (xeets?) about it:
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2028261823678759335?s=20
| ianburrell wrote:
| Starshield means multiple things, or really it is SpaceX
| business unit with military. Starshield is the name for US
| military buying Starlink service. It is also SpaceX
| building Starlink-based satellites for the military. This
| doesn't have to be communications, the first ones were
| missile defense trackers.
|
| I think the custom satellites came first and they rebranded
| the communications after it.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| In Canada, the CF is working on rebuilding their expertise in HF
| radio, as they realized that in case of large scale conflict,
| satellite systems aren't going to be dependable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Forces_Affiliate_Radi...
| spwa4 wrote:
| Ever notice just _how many_ countries seem to be pretty
| convinced war is coming? And don 't tell me it's all Trump, at
| the very least they believe that whoever follows Trump isn't
| going to be very different. Plus it's mostly EU that's
| rearming, and surely they aren't afraid they'll be attacked ...
| roughly wrote:
| EU had a reliable military and technological partner in the
| US until circa 2016, and maintaining that belief became
| untenable in 2024. The reason EU countries are all of the
| sudden investing in onshoring critical military capabilities
| is that until Trump it's been the policy position of the US
| to prevent them from doing so by doing it for them, a policy
| we inaugurated after WW2 and expanded during the Cold War for
| various reasons that we seem very sure don't apply anymore.
| spwa4 wrote:
| I've worked in defense tech. This is true, but it should be
| described much more as "Europe believed US would save their
| ass - for free, and did nothing" (with exceptions, like
| France, and some token efforts within NATO) The US was not
| holding back much within NATO.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's more that most European countries had little reason
| to spend money on defense. Until recently, Finland and
| Sweden were small countries close to Russia but outside
| NATO, and their defense spending was similar to West
| European NATO members. In other words, nobody saw any
| real military threats to Western / Northern Europe, and
| the NATO security guarantees had more political than
| military value. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the
| threat environment changed.
|
| I'm less familiar with the situation in Eastern Europe.
| Many countries joined NATO as quickly as possible,
| because they understood the Russian doctrine and saw a
| real threat there. Russia tries to surround itself with
| puppets / friends / allies, by force if necessary, to
| avoid having to fight in its own territory. Many East
| European countries didn't want to be part of that so soon
| after the fall of communism. But it looks like the idea
| of being in friendly terms with Russia instead of fully
| committing to the West never went away.
| yostrovs wrote:
| 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 mocking.
| roughly wrote:
| Again, this was a considered policy choice on the part of
| the United States. Unipolar military supremacy bought us
| a quiet Europe, a stable and high dollar, and the ability
| to set the terms on nearly every other negotiation we
| made with European countries. This was an intentional
| trade: we will spend on the military so you don't have
| to. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, some US
| policymakers deluded themselves into thinking geopolitics
| didn't exist anymore, and so we've come to start bitching
| more about our side of paying that bill, but we bought
| the American century with military spending.
|
| And, to be clear, the US not having health care is a
| policy decision on the part of the US, not some lack of
| funding, as becomes clear when one looks at the
| expenditure per capita on healthcare in the US compared
| to other developed countries.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Militaries have to always behave like there is a war coming
| soon. They might not believe that one is coming soon, but
| they have to behave like it is. If they don't, they won't be
| prepared when one does happen.
| spwa4 wrote:
| This is politicians rearming militaries, not militaries
| rearming themselves. You're right that militaries want to
| arm, but they've been trying for a _very_ long time, and
| just been denied, and denied and denied some more.
| iSnow wrote:
| Some EU member states are bordering Russia, of course they
| are afraid the next war will be on their soil.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Canada has a lot of obscure technology that would normally fall
| under export restriction in the US.
|
| The problem I have with the Canadian business culture was there
| is zero protection on a global scale for your company, privacy,
| and or personal safety. =3
| elevation wrote:
| Any serious journalist/aid work efforts should be doing the
| same. It's too easy for countries to disable terrestrial
| internet to suppress reporting. And it's too easy for AI to
| generate believable but false video evidence. But if you can
| afford to put a man on the ground, he can get information into
| the next hemisphere with just a sandwich sized radio and a
| spool of wire -- a fantastic backup against inevitable systemic
| disruptions.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Starlink direct connect LTE support is simply going to bury any
| telecom that ignores the technology.
|
| Essentially, anyone with a smart-phone will now be able to text
| home from anywhere without specialized equipment. Elon can take a
| victory lap on that product.
|
| Competitors naive enough to underestimate what it took to build
| Starlink are going to find spectrum auctions already well out of
| their league. =3
| spwa4 wrote:
| They have suddenly discovered what engineers have been telling
| them for about 80 years, and theoreticians have known for 100+
| years is actually true: directional beams that cannot
| realistically be distrupted + satellites out of reach + even if
| you can you can only take _ALL_ satellites out of orbit (ie.
| including your own, not just the enemy 's). So on future
| battlefields, everyone will have livestreaming.
|
| Do governments and militaries even believe in the laws of
| physics? I mean that exactly this was going to happen
| (undisruptable radio comms + robots, on the battlefield) was
| perfectly predictable near ~about 1960, and it's an absolute
| miracle that it took so long to come to pass.
|
| And even that is assuming you're only willing to believe in
| demonstrations. For physicists it must have been a theoretical
| certainty that this was coming before WW1 was done.
| jordanb wrote:
| I think the next big war will involve a kessler syndrome, not
| because people start firing off anti-satellite weapons (since
| there's a strong component of MAD in doing that) but because the
| belligerents will have their own multi-thousand satellite
| constellations in orbit and they will quit coordinating with one
| another on collision avoidance.
| childintime wrote:
| A smaller player like North Korea and Iran would not have as
| much to lose. Iran is doing something similar today, suicide
| bombing everything it can.
| krunck wrote:
| Iran also has a space program with Satellites:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Space_Agency
| tehjoker wrote:
| These LEO satellites are low enough that I imagine a Kessler
| situation would self-resolve within a few years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Starlink is redeploying to 300 miles. Many consider Kessler to
| be impossible at 300 miles. Any unpowered satellite at a 300
| mile orbit will deorbit within a couple of months. But a
| collision means fragments which deorbit faster because they
| have a higher surface/weight ratio, and because orbit
| disturbances lower that time considerably. Any single
| disturbance that raises aphelion lowers perihelion.
| rationalist wrote:
| Would collisions cause debris to be ejected into a higher
| orbit? Although I guess as long as the debris does not pick
| up any significant speed boost, its orbit would be elliptical
| and would just collide with Earth (burn up on re-entry)?
| mylies43 wrote:
| Wouldn't a explosion give it that energy?
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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 platforms run by EU companies subject to
| EU jurisdiction. Think EU AWS. This is easier said than done.
|
| But this is really a consequence of the current administration
| having absolutely no idea what they're doing and they're
| intentionally and unintentionally destroying American soft power.
|
| Another way this can come to pass is that the EU decides that the
| US is an unreliable partner for their security needs so you will
| find that various weapons, vehicles, platforms, etc for EU
| militaries will be supplied by local companies, particularly if
| the US effectively abandons Ukraine.
|
| Starlink is just another piece of that.
|
| The current administration paints NATO as Europe taking advantage
| of the US. It could not be more wrong. NATO is a protection
| racket for the US to sell weapons and control European foreign
| policy.
|
| We kind of saw a precursor to all this with GPS. For anyone who
| has been around long enough, GPS used to be less accurate,
| deliberately. Why? Because defence (apparently). There was a
| special signal, Selective Ability ("SA") [1], that military gear
| could decode to be more accurate.
|
| Fun fact: one of the clues to the first Gulf War was that the
| military turned off SA on the commercial GPS system because they
| couldn't procure enough military equipment so had to use civilian
| gear [2].
|
| I think Europe was slow to learn the lesson of being completely
| reliant on the US but we did end up with Glonass and Galileo as a
| result.
|
| To exert the kind of control the US does through tech platfoorms,
| the US needs to be predictable and reliable can't be too overt
| with exerting political influence such that American imperial
| subjects can pretend they're still independent. This
| administration has shattered that illusion.
|
| [1]: https://www.gps.gov/selective-availability
|
| [2]: https://www.spirent.com/blogs/selective-availability-a-
| bad-m...
| palmotea wrote:
| > 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.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| You can't simultaneously argue that NATO is a "protection
| racket" for the US to sell weapons and control European foreign
| policy, and also argue that the EU would be in trouble without
| the current levels of US participation. Either NATO is a scam
| that exploits Europe, or it's a security umbrella that Europe
| needs.
|
| The "protection racket", in particular, is very dishonest. The
| US has spent 3-4% of GDP on defense for decades, outspending
| the rest of NATO combined, while the majority of NATO members
| continuously fail to meet their monetary contributions. Most of
| America's allies would not be able to fund their generous
| social programs if the majority of their military capabilities
| weren't directly tied to the implied threat of the US military
| interceding.
|
| America's allies haven't necessarily been that reliable for us
| either.
|
| During Operation Prosperity Guardian, Houthis started attacking
| commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, directly
| threatening European trade routes, and the US could barely get
| token naval contributions from allies. The US deployed an
| entire carrier strike group while Norway sent ten staff
| officers, the Netherlands sent two, and Finland sent two
| soldiers. France, Italy, and Spain refused to participate;
| Denmark contributed a single staff officer while being one of
| the primary beneficiaries of the US naval protection.
|
| With Operation Epic Fury, the US asked to use jointly operated
| bases for staging, and Spain banned the US and then demanded
| that the American tanker aircraft leave. The UK refused to
| provide any support until drones hit a UK base in Cyprus, and
| even then, their mobilization was extremely slow. They weren't
| even able to deploy their carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales,
| without getting an escort from France. Canada praised the
| removal of Iran's nuclear capabilities, while providing no
| support and heavily criticizing the operation itself.
|
| Can we actually be clear on "reliability"? There is not a
| single defense analyst in the world who seriously believes the
| US wouldn't IMMEDIATELY defend Canada if Russia launched an
| offense against them. The unreliability comes from trade policy
| (which I think is mostly dumb, but is also very much not a one-
| way action), hesitancy to fund Ukraine at levels that aren't
| being matched by NATO allies, and Trump's blustering about
| "adding a 51st state" (no one seriously believes the US is
| going to annex Canada).
|
| America will continue to act as a deterrent against military
| action for her allies, and said allies will still not have to
| commit to the spending that would be required to field a
| military that is actually a near-peer to China or Russia.
|
| Having said all of that, I 100% support America's allies
| building out their own cloud infrastructure and bringing
| defense R&D and manufacturing back locally. Israel has been
| moving to cut direct dependency on the US and instead acts as a
| partner in new joint defense capabilities. I think a similar
| strategy for Canada and Europe would be best for all.
|
| I'm honestly not sure how practical an EU counterpart to
| Starshield is, but maybe a partnership with SpaceX would allow
| them to more realistically diversify while the EU builds up its
| space capabilities.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > no one seriously believes the US is going to annex Canada
|
| Many people believe that the US annexing Canada is a higher
| probability than either China or Russia doing so. All three
| are very low probabilities.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| > Many people believe that the US annexing Canada is a
| higher probability than either China or Russia doing so.
| All three are very low probabilities.
|
| I believe those people are being a bit silly, and their
| position probably comes from a strong dislike of Trump as a
| person, and not a genuine belief.
|
| Russia annexed a warm-water port and then shortly after
| attempted to incorporate Ukraine as part of a plan to
| remake the USSR. The only thing keeping China from taking
| Taiwan is the United States.
|
| The US has no desire to annex Canada, and it also has no
| need to. If Canada proposed statehood or even a territory
| agreement with the US, I genuinely don't think it would
| even pass a vote.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Russia might have the desire to annex Canada, but they
| don't have the capability.
|
| China might have the capability, but they don't have the
| desire.
|
| Only US has both the capability and the desire.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| The US doesn't have a desire to annex Canada; that's very
| silly. And the reason Russia doesn't have the capability
| is because of Canada's alliance with the US.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A sizable minority of the US population has the desire to
| annex Canada.
|
| If Canada was not allied with the US, Russia would still
| not have the capability. And the reason for that is
| Ukraine.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > You can't simultaneously argue that NATO is a "protection
| racket" for the US to sell weapons and control European
| foreign policy, and also argue that the EU would be in
| trouble without the current levels of US participation.
|
| Sure I can. I can both deny you the means to defend yourself,
| forcing you to rely on me for protection. That's the
| definition of a protection racket.
|
| > The US has spent 3-4% of GDP on defense for decades ...
|
| Ah, now I get it. This is Trump administration talking points
| eg [1]. Those talking points are just a shakedown for
| American defense contractors. Again, just like a protection
| racket. Because it is a protection racket.
|
| > Most of America's allies would not be able to fund their
| generous social programs
|
| This is revisionist history at best. The US has done their
| best to undermine and dismantle European social programs.
| Even something like the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund was
| only _tolerated_ because of Norway 's strategic position in
| the North Atlantic as a foil against the USSR.
|
| > During Operation Prosperity Guardian, Houthis started
| attacking commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea,
| directly threatening European trade routes,
|
| America was protecting Israel's trade routes. Let's be clear.
| European trade routes largely just rerouted around the Cape
| of Good Hope.
|
| But again we come back to the protection racket. You can't
| both have a protection racket (and, by extension, defang the
| militaries of the protectorates) AND expect military help,
| particularly when the entire thing only happened because of
| the US material support to Israel's genocide.
|
| > With Operation Epic Fury ...
|
| Operation Epstein Fury FTFY
|
| > ... the US asked to use jointly operated bases for staging,
|
| Yes, literally nobody wanted the US and Israel to launch an
| unnecessary, unprovoked and ill-planned war on Iran other
| than the US and Israel. Everybody else, including Europe and
| other Middle East neighbours, all of whom are American client
| states, basically, begged the US not to do it. And they did
| anyway.
|
| So yeah, you're on your own.
|
| > Can we actually be clear on "reliability"? There is not a
| single defense analyst in the world who seriously believes
| the US wouldn't IMMEDIATELY defend Canada if Russia launched
| an offense against them.
|
| Not a single defense analyst would even seriously consider
| such a prospect any more than Fiji invading the Central
| African Republic. What are you talking about?
|
| [1]: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-slams-czech-republic-
| over...
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| Ignoring the ... less substantive portions of your response
|
| > I can both deny you the means to defend yourself, forcing
| you to rely on me for protection. That's the definition of
| a protection racket.
|
| The US didn't deny Europe the means to defend itself.
| Europe chose not to build those means because it was
| cheaper to rely on the US. These were domestic political
| choices made by governments whose voters preferred social
| programs over defense budgets. A protection racket requires
| coercion; what the EU received is much closer to a subsidy.
|
| > This is revisionist history at best. The US has done
| their best to undermine and dismantle European social
| programs.
|
| Can you cite a specific example? The US has broadly pushed
| for capitalist markets or free trade via policy, but "done
| their best to undermine and dismantle European social
| programs" is a very strong claim without evidence. Norway's
| sovereign wealth fund being "tolerated" because of
| strategic positioning is, at best, a conspiracy theory.
| There has been some tension over Norway divesting in
| American companies for political reasons, but that's hardly
| the claim you've made.
|
| > America was protecting Israel's trade routes. Let's be
| clear. European trade routes largely just rerouted around
| the Cape of Good Hope.
|
| Rerouting around the Cape added weeks of delay and a high
| monetary cost to European shipping. Just because European
| ships _could_ reroute doesn 't mean the European economy
| wasn't significantly impacted. Why did the European trade
| association publicly beg for more governments to join the
| operation if the Red Sea shipping was only about Israel?
|
| > You can't both have a protection racket and expect
| military help
|
| You expect America to adopt a one-way obligation where it
| provides for the defense of its allies, and receives no
| help in return? Why wouldn't that deal fall apart?
|
| > Yes, literally nobody wanted the US and Israel to launch
| an unnecessary, unprovoked and ill-planned war on Iran
|
| You can disagree with the decision to strike Iran. But when
| Iran retaliates by launching missiles and drones into 12
| different countries (11 of which had not participated in
| the initial strikes against Iran in any way), the question
| of whether allies will support defensive operations is
| separate from whether they endorsed the initial strikes.
|
| > Not a single defense analyst would even seriously
| consider such a prospect
|
| No country would seriously consider it a prospect because
| the entire might of the US Armed Forces would immediately
| engage anyone who tried. This despite the fact that Canada
| has anemic defense spending, a large arctic border with
| Russia, and strategic assets I'm sure Russia would love to
| have.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > You expect America to adopt a one-way obligation where
| it provides for the defense of its allies, and receives
| no help in return? Why wouldn't that deal fall apart?
|
| If I drop you into a war zone and don't give you a gun,
| don't you have to kinda do what I say?
|
| > You can disagree with the decision to strike Iran.
|
| There's only one country on Earth that supports attacking
| Iran and that's Israel [1]. Americans don't support this
| war [2].
|
| > But when Iran retaliates by launching missiles and
| drones into 12 different countries (11 of which had not
| participated in the initial strikes against Iran in any
| way), the question of whether allies will support
| defensive operations is separate from whether they
| endorsed the initial strikes.
|
| What targets did Iran strike in those 11 countries? Was
| it US military bases? Radar installations? There were
| also hotels housing US military personnel who had
| abandoned US bases because the US either chose not to
| defend them or was unable to.
|
| Everybody, except you it seems, understands America is
| doing this for Israel and the Gulf states are caught up
| in this because they house American military bases and
| provide indirect or direct support an unprovoked war.
| These arne't innocent bystanders.
|
| [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/13/success-
| uncertain-b...
|
| [2]: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54284-americans-
| think-war-...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that aside from Elons behavior the real
| issue with Starlink is that it's insolvent. Starlink does not
| make money. (The solvency gap is hotly debated) But that fact
| means it's long-term reliability is in question. No military
| wants to risk that kind of system dependency.
| vardump wrote:
| Anything to back that up? Starlink is widely considered
| profitable.
| Razengan wrote:
| God can we have an alien invasion already PLEASE
|
| 12 000 years of this shit
| bluGill wrote:
| Sorry, relativity is against it. They - if they exist (a debate
| I'm not touching) - don't even know we are here. Even if they
| knew we are here they can't get here.
| Razengan wrote:
| Or have a hands-off policy like we do with uncontacted tribes
| and some protected animal populations etc.
|
| I'll settle for anything to be honest. A sign, a derelict, an
| artifact, a fossil, an echo.. anything to distract humans
| from shitting on each other for a little while at least.
| bluGill wrote:
| Again, physics says they can't. relativite and signal
| degrigation is hard. the energy of a star outside our arm
| of the galaxy isn't easy to detect, much less any signal of
| lower power.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Our current knowledge of physics says they can't. Who
| knows what others figured out. We still can't even
| explain 80% of the mass we measure.
| kkfx wrote:
| People seem to have trouble understanding that orbital space
| isn't infinite, nor is the manoeuvrability of satellites; or to
| put it another way, there isn't room for everyone with launch
| capabilities.
| agentultra wrote:
| I hope this doesn't continue unabated. LEO pollution of all kinds
| is liable to get out of hand. From particulates on re-entry
| combustion, gases from launch rockets, to light pollution from
| the orbiting swarm... seems like there's too much traffic up
| there.
| cameldrv wrote:
| 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 constellation, but my
| guess is that it's already up there and it's called Starlink.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Starlink has become quite massive since v1.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10283270
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