I feel like I should get college credit for reading your posts.
I think Starlink (or ‘Starshield’) is the big differentiator here. It looks like i’t so far an unjammable, unkillable satellite system.
It actually upsets the balance of power. Once the U.S. has enough critical communication routed through Starshield, they can kill an enemy’s satellite comms and the enemy cannot do the same.
It’s even been shown that Starlink can substitute for GPS.
I highly doubt either of these statements are true. There is no such thing as an “unkillable satellite system”; any operating spacecraft in orbit is visible through its intrared signature regardless of how ‘stealthy’ it may be optically, and of course communication satellites will radiating in radio frequency bands continuously. If the claim is that there are just too many to shoot down, I’ll note that it is almost trivial for a nation such as China with extensive space launch capability to initiate a Kessler cascade in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), essentially producing enough ballistic contamination to deny a broad azimuthal band for decades. It really doesn’t matter how many thousands of satellites SpaceX or whomever may have up; they’re all going to be so much shrapnel in relatively short order after a deliberate attack. Which is exactly the kind of thing China might do if they are losing the high ground in a space conflict.
I can’t find anything online about using ‘Starshield’ as a replacement global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for the American GPS so I don’t know where you’ve gotten this information, nor would that really be feasible from the UN Navy applications for multiple reasons; for one, it would not be able to integrate with the navigation and weapon systems on Navy vessels because SpaceX does not use the same encryption and verification protocols that the military equipment requires specifically to avoid being spoofed, nor do they even use commercial GPS signals. Another issue is that Starlink/Starshield satellites are in orbits low enough that they are moving extremely fast and variations in orbit due to mass concentrations are significant, making precision timing required for GNSS location virtually impossible. As far as I am aware, the SpaceX ground segment does not use atomic clocks and laser frequency measurement to constantly maintain the high precision ephemerides required for GNSS signals. And again, the Starlink/Starshield satellites are in orbits highly vulnerable to attack versus GPS, which is in the mid-altitude range of Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) on six different azimuths (four satellites each, plus backups) where it is far less subject to any kind of Kessler-type attack, and would essentially require independent interceptions for each satellite. Even a degraded GPS system with multiple satellites removed would provide more precision than uncoordinated signals from satellites zipping around in LEO, and the GPS system was designed from the forefront to be as resistant to a spacewar attack as feasible (i.e. not vulnerable to laser blinding or electromagnetic disruption attacks, robust authentication of signals, backup satellites, et cetera).
Everything I can find about ‘Starshield’ (which is long on boastful advertising and short on actual details) indicates that it is intended for use in high bandwidth, low latency networked ground communication, a service to which Starlink was purpose-designed. I see nothing about using it as a GNSS, nor any details about how it could be protected against an attack from even a moderately sophisticated opponent.
Stranger
Stranger
Yes, I’m talking about quantity. You aren’t going to kill 12,000 satellites with ASAT assets. And so far, no one has managed to jam Starlink.
Kessler syndrome as a tactical weapon? The Kessler syndrom is a long-term effect. It doesn’t happen overnight. More like months to years. And since it would desteoy a lot of non-military space assets including potentially the ISS and China’s space station, it would be an extreme move.
@What_Exit: My apologies for missing this thread for a week. I saw it on my phone when I couldn’t make substantive reply, but pretty well forgot it immediately thereafter. And must not have looked at it long enough to trigger Discourse to consider it Unread. So once it was gone from both my New and my Unread, it was out of my sight out of my mind. I wasn’t trying to slink away from responding to your quite reasonable question.
To refresh everyone’s recollection, here’s the pertinent bit of what I had written in the other thread about China in general and the PLAN in specific versus the Philippines, not versus Taiwan:
IMO @Stranger_On_A_Train has ably defended my position. With a close second place medal to @Sam_Stone. Over their 10+ combined excellent posts, they’ve both written roughly the same ideas I would have.
The USA in general, and USN in particular has rather shallow magazines of munitions and a rather shallow bench of reserve forces or even other-ocean fleets compared to what Ukraine has taught us about lethality and consumption rates of 2020’s combat. Full bore modern combat has insane rates of consumption of blood and treasure.
The US has also sent a large fraction of those magazines to be consumed in Ukraine, and is looking at replacement times measured in years and decades, not weeks. Recognizing that after that decade-plus of effort we’d only be back up to the too-low 2020 levels that Ukraine has exposed as too low. Building up the US stocks and the US Navy to the point we could confidently enter combat against China at will with virtual certainty of success is the very expensive work of multiple decades. And that assumes the Chinese will stand still while we do that. As Mr. Spock might put it: “Unlikely, Captain.”
Having said that, that does not mean the Chinese would simply sweep the seas clean of our fleets then dismember the Philippines or Taiwan at their undamaged and unobstructed leisure. US forces of all sorts would inflict one hell of a lot of pain on the way to the bottom.
But what we see in Ukraine / Russia today is that totalitarian states can cause more damage for longer, and absorb more pain for longer, than many / most Western democracies are willing to sustain. The West is on the verge of giving up on Ukraine after merely two years and nearly zero Western casualties. It’s the work of a decade (at least) to fund & empower Ukraine to outlast Putin’s Russia. And will take Western troops before it’s over; the Ukrainian forces are heavily exhausted and their population doesn’t have too many un-deployed men left.
If China was to make an all-out grab for Taiwan (shifting targets here), the US would suffer severe losses trying to prevent that. Leading quickly (a couple weeks, a month tops) to the nuke-or-withdraw decision. The public, if asked, would favor the latter. And rightly so.
As @Stranger_On_A_Train so eloquently said, deterrence (conventional and nuclear) requires rational actors on both sides. Putin has proven he’s not rational, or that he’s being lied to about reality on the ground so thoroughly that the decisions appear to be irrational versus true reality no matter how much sense they make within the distorted reality fed to Putin. From our POV the outcome is the same.
And it’s quite plausible that Xi is riding that same train towards the same crazytown destination. Admittedly with Chinese characteristics, but with externally similar broad-brush outcomes: an increasingly harsh ill-tempered peace with increasing pinprick provocations that slowly warm into sustained low-intensity conflict followed by a build-up and conventional wargasm.
This recent whole post
said it well. The PRC / Taiwanese status quo will not last 300 years. Something will break someday sooner than that. Will it be Xi getting antsy? Hard to know, but it’d be foolish to say “Never! The Chinese are far too rational / long-sighted to act in such haste.” They are driving in that direction today and are currently picking up speed.
I think this is mainly what China is after. Invading the US is so far from being possible or worthwhile as to not be worth thinking about.
China wants to assert its dominance in the South China sea and Taiwan and more broadly Korea and Japan. They want to push the US out of their sphere of influence so they can do as they wish in that area.
While the US has a more powerful navy it is spread around the world and China is working diligently to increase its naval power.
Can China defeat the US navy? Probably not but they do not need to. They just need to be able to diminish US power in SE Asia and they may be able to manage that in time.
Right. Very well-said.
China’s current goal is simply to deny the US military de facto control over Southeast Asia and the seas nearby. Thereby giving them a free hand for economic warfare, military and foreign policy coercion, and slow but unceasing territorial encroachment. That is a much more achievable goal for them in a near term. And one we are already struggling to play catch-up against.
Between the USA’s domestic distractions and the unending war in Ukraine, the Chinese think, and probably rightly, that they can make great gains at low cost while we try to juggle more balls than can be done skillfully or affordably.
China doesn’t have to sink a single U.S. carrier - all they have to do is create a threat environment dangerous enough that the U.S. won’t risk a carrier in the first place.
The problem with carrier forces is that they are a kind of tripwire - if your carrier group takes significant damage, it pretty much pushes you into the war. Carriers are great for projecting power to near-coastal countries with second-rate militaries, but against someone with serious ship-killing capabilities, the risk of losing a major warship might just keep them out ofmthe conflict much like the rest of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
I don’t kmow if carriers can survive in a world of cheap drones. Aircraft on deck are vulnerable to even hobby class drones. CIWS ammunition is not unlimited, and drones are cheap and quick to build. A simple AI in the drone could identify ships from altitude and attack without human operators, targeting aircraft on deck, windows, plane elevators lowering and raising etc.
Do you have a cite for that? It is my understanding that the GPS satellites carry atomic clock hardware, which is probably not the case for Starlink?
Also, can the Starlink system transmit signals which current GPS receivers can decode?
If not, new receivers would be needed. That might just be a software issue, though?
Of course, I would not be surprised if some rather intensive research is ongoing in this area!
I think he gave a cite for that in post #44 of this thread.
Oops, right, not reading closely enough.
From that though, it seems to be rather theoretical at the moment, and not compatible with current receivers?
It’s not theoretical technologically; it’s fully completed work that works.
It’s not incorporated into mainstream commercial products today. That doesn’t mean it isn’t being exploited by more sophisticated drone makers. And if not this week, perhaps next.
I don’t have any inside knowledge to be able to judge that. But of course the US military has a lot of resources to throw at problems, so I would not be surprised if they have something operational…
“There are four core satellite navigation systems, currently GPS (United States), GLONASS (Russian Federation), Beidou (China) and Galileo (European Union).” - SOURCE
I can’t imagine why the US (or any of the above) would want to do the Starlink hack except just to know how. There is a reason there are four systems…each does not want to risk being locked out of the other ones so they operate their own (each system is under control of their government which can limit accuracy or just turn them off for public use if they feel the need).
I’d think the Starlink hack would be used by any but the above four.
I would guess that any military strategist would want to reverse-engineer the other systems, as well as working with the Starlink hack, just for redundancy.
One thing about Starlink of course is that it has a LOT of satellites, rather than the other systems which have, what, a few dozen? So potentially more robust.
I know a little bit about modern naval warfare and submarine observations but I’m sure @robby or another submariner could address the difficulties of operating in the East and South China Seas with more knowledge. I’ll just say that decades of bombast and Tom Clancy novels have left the impression of the invincibility of the US Navy due to its technological advantages and superior training, and while that may or may not have been true in late ‘Eightes and ‘Nineties, I don’t think that can be taken for granted today, particularly when operating in waters that are as heavily patrolled as those seas by a navy that has been progressing in its capabilities. Out in the mid-Pacific, where PLAN would have difficulty maintaining logistics and less advantage of the familiar home waters and land-based air coverage, would be a different story (although perhaps not as slam dunk as some might imagine), but in naval coverage China currently owns the Taiwan Strait pretty much all of the South China Sea down to Da Nang and all the way east to the Luzon Strait.
An accidental (or at least, incidental) Kessler Syndrome would take a long time to develop, but an intentionally targeted Kessler Cascade, particularly using weapons specifically designed to distribute debris widely across a broad azimuthal zone and a suitable range of altitude would not take long at all; half a dozen incidents could result in complete denial of that slice of orbital space in a few weeks with no hope of recovery for decades because once it happens the debris field grows exponentially, especially with a constellation like Starlink where satellites fly in ‘chains’ or convoys. It isn’t a tactical kind of attack; it is a “scorched earth” (scorched orbit?) operation in response to a strategic threat, which is exactly how the PRC views the United States operating in South Asia, especially with the recent AUKUS pact. “Quantity is a quality all its own” is a long repeated mantra that is suited to the 19th century battlefield but is pretty meaningless in the face of strategic attack, either on the ground or orbital warspace.
As for using ‘Starshield’ as a navigation system, I’ll note that the cited MIT Tech Review is long on claims but short on actual details, and is basically just reporting on what Todd Humphrey’s study claimed. I’ve only skimmed the paper, which goes deep into their implementation of a tracking system using blind identification of OFDM signals, but I’ll note that even a cursory review reveals a number of caveats about the technique, including this paragraph:
Unlike GNSS spreading codes, however, the Starlink synchronization sequences are not unique to each satellite. This presents a satellite assignment ambiguity problem that must be solved combinatorially based upon approximate user location, known satellite ephemerides, and measured Doppler and frame arrival time.
Further, from the Tech Review article:
If the terrestrial receiver has a good idea of the satellites’ movements—which SpaceX shares online to reduce the risk of orbital collisions—it can use the sequences’ regularity to work out which satellite they came from, and then calculate the distance to that satellite. By repeating this process for multiple satellites, a receiver can locate itself to within about 30 meters, says Humphreys.
The article does go on to talk about the work of another researcher (Zak Kassas at Ohio State) claiming to have an approach of getting to less than 10 meters using some kind of AI handwaving he calls “cognitive opportunistic navigation”, about which I’ll opine nothing other than that I’ll believe it when it is actually demonstrated in practice, and that if SpaceX opened up with signal data format giving specific data about each satellite, “accuracy could theoretically improve to less than a meter”, to which I’ll note that whenever you see the term “theoretically” applied in a paper to to some estimate of accuracy or precision the rule of thumb is to remove an order of magnitude in practical application. A system that could provide a ~10 meter accuracy would be a decent backup for a true GPS-type system for navigation purposes but is less than ideal for many tactical applications such as guided munitions. And I’ll note again that this is in no way a drop-in replacement for GPS, and so it can’t just be used without major changes (not just software but actual hardware receivers even if they can be made as compact as modern GPS antenna and receiver systems), so the notion that ‘Starshield’ is a simple replacement is nonsense.
As for the claim, “And so far, no one has managed to jam Starlink,”, well, from your own cite:
Starlink reportedly suffered a catastrophic loss of communications in late September in Ukraine, where it is being widely used for voice and electronic communications, to help fly drones, and even to correct artillery fire. Although it is unclear whether the outages were due to jamming by Russian forces, Musk tweeted last week: “Russia is actively trying to kill Starlink. To safeguard, SpaceX has diverted massive resources towards defense.”
I am not at all sanguine about the use of Starlink/Starshield for critical communications and navigation needs even aside from the evident physical security vulnerabilities from a spacewar attack.
The PRC certainly isn’t going to last three centuries, and frankly may not even last the next three decades. (If you read or listen to Peter Zeihan you might have the impression that it isn’t going to last through the decade but I think that is overly pessimistic, although they certainly have massive financial and demographic challenges ahead of them.) Like Putin, Xi has essentially eliminated everyone who might challenge him, and as a consequence anyone who might counsel him about the inadvisability of plans to attempt an annexation of Taiwan.
I think we need to be realistic about what we don’t know about the high level decision process in the PRC government and military because we’ve been largely wrong in the past couple of decades in assuming that China would sacrifice the primacy of security for economic incentives of being a central part of the globalized commerce system when it has become clear that they actually intend to be the regional hegemony of South Asia, and perhaps the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Nothing about recent developments is indicative of purported “long term thinking” in almost the same way that we were mistaken about the Japanese economy and the asset price bubble that popped in the early ‘Nineties; before that you had all kinds of business and strat-fi analysts talking about how the Japanese were thinking in terms of the next quarter century while the West was only thinking about next financial quarter, and then it turned out that the Japanese weren’t actually thinking very clearly at all.
It would not surprise me in the least at this point if Xi, under pressure of a failing financial system, climate-caused agricultural decline, and needing to fortify some kind of enduring legacy, commenced on an ill-conceived venture to ‘take back’ Taiwan into the Chinese fold, and pressed on until it spiraled into a global conflict with potentially dire consequences.
Stranger
I completely agree with this latter part.
“Peak China” may already be in the past. But if not, they have inevitable problems aplenty staring them in the face. Which is a darn poor time to place an unyielding demagogue in power who then surrounds himself with nothing but yes-men.
Wait a minute. Which country am I describing?
We (ordinary humanity of whatever nationality) are sooo screwed.
One of the standard solutions to the Fermi Question, of course. Technological cultures usually wipe themselves out when they develop powerful enough weapons?
Where are the Wise Elders who can help us navigate through this bottleneck?
If that is the great filter, then you should assume that no wise elders will be able to help, because if the problem could be solved that way it wouldn’t be a great filter.
As a general proposition, I don’t think a great filter makes any more sense than a few not-quite-great filters or a whole bunch of small filters, or no filters at all, since the Fermi paradox isn’t a paradox and we don’t have enough data to really even know if other civilizations might be around.
But as a candidate for a GF, I’ve always thought, “rising technology creates destructive power faster than the ability to control it” is a good candidate.
When I saw that I first read it as “girlfriend.”
(I know what you meant, clear in context, just my stupid brain running off.)