starlink technology changing the battlefield how can BRICS respond

Darling, look I always thought that Starling was going to cause a big bloody drama. We've been talking about it recently, haven't we, but with the Geron drones, those Geron jet-powered drones that have got a rumour to have a Starling dish on the back of them, or some sort of dish on the back of them, and look we're now seeing, you know we're seeing the evolution of this entire discussion and subject of low earth orbit satellites that can provide a data link, very low-cost data link to things like drones. What's all this about? This is about a run basically escalating and declaring Starling, Elon Musk he just did an IPO and I think it was worth two trillion dollars when they did the IPO for SpaceX and and in their family of products is the Starling product which is this, you know, Leo satellite, low earth orbit satellite network, it's a massive mesh, it's around me right now to be up there in the sky right above me right now and basically that crats a high speed internet network anywhere on the planet and Harana basically said, right that's been attacking us, you guys and our complicit, you are part of the war against Iran so we are here by declaring Starling, Elon Musk, you and Starling you're a legitimate military target, that's the Iranians talking is not me, this is the Iranians to be clear, so Iran's direct and hawkish threat, Iran's state media through the Fars and it was news agency has explicitly declared that Elon Musk's companies in the Middle East including SpaceX's Starling satellite internet servers, it's declared that they are now considered legitimate military targets, the Islamic Republic reserves the right to strike all masquerful-yated facilities in the region, well, citing alleged use of the Starling infrastructure and the X platform by US and Israeli forces and operations against Iran, against Iran I should say my bad, it's just both out with eye so yeah but they are completely different so yeah so basically they're declaring a, I don't know what do they call it a fat way or is that what they call it I'm not sure but they're basically saying right that's it we're going to hammer you guys so specific Starling ground stations in Qatar and Jordan, UAE and in Israel it's been named as potential targets, now this is not I don't think this is political posturing, I think it's a deliberate escalation, I think it is exactly what it says on the tin, this is Iran, this is Iran basically, I mean this is basically saying we're coming after you we're going to get you, they're treating a commercial satellite network as fair game and it's conflict with the West and with Israel, now Iran is already jammed and seized, they've seized Starling terminals inside its borders during blackouts and protests but now it's signaling willingness to take the fight to the infrastructure itself, that's bloody huge, now let's have a look at the Russia, China, Iran, Axis, what can they actually do, what are they doing today in terms of intelligence and data sharing, I mean what can they do, so the threat does not come in isolation of course, it's not just around that are that are seeing this threat, deepening ties with Russia, Russia, Russia and the pacing threat, China in a de facto Axis armed at countering US and Western dominance, China has provided Iran with access to its by-do satellite navigation system, enabling more accurate missile and drone targeting an electronic warfare data, and there you go, Russia has supplied satellite imagery and modified Shahar drone technology, helping Iran improve navigation and real-time targeting based on lessons from Ukraine, there is growing evidence of trilateral intelligence sharing, so the three of them are sharing information including satellite surveillance, radar data and electronic warfare techniques specifically useful for disrupting Western communications and navigation systems just like Stalin, this collaboration gives around enhanced situational awareness and tools to locate, to track and potentially to interfere with the ground stations, the satellite ground stations or beams, the radio beams between the satellites and the ground stations, this Axis, we call it the Axis of evil right, I guess they would call it the Axis of strength or something like that, sharing data to turn commercial Western tech into vulnerabilities and Stalin because now squirrely in the cross he is, can they, I guess the question now team is can they, I'm a radio, I mean almost, I'm an avionic engineer, so we trained on radio principles and radar and things like that, so I've got some idea, not expert to per say, but I've got a reasonable idea of what's going on, so the question for today is, can I run and collectively rush in China, can they jam Stalin from the ground? Well, so ground-based jamming of Stalin down links which are primarily up in the KU band, which is 10 7, 10.7 to 12.7 gigahertz, so pretty high frequency and up in the KA band is technically possible, but it's extremely difficult to do effectively at scale, so yes when people say yeah you could do it yes you can but can you do it at scale, can you do it effectively at scale, that's the question, so Stalin uses highly directional phased array beams that can be steered in real phased, so these these beam steering phased arrays, it's a big flat panel but that panel can basically, it's got like radio directional capability, so in the old days you'd have like a big dish, you remember the old satellite dishes and at the front of the dish would be a collector, and on that collector they'd be like they're called an Allen B, but basically they'd be like a little filter that would connect via a cable back into the receiver electronics one have you, and this dish would basically be focused on a particular point in space, and that's where the transmitting satellite would be, that's how you did it, as they came up with this new technique to basically have a flat panel that could steer a beam in any particular direction, so if a Leo was coming across they could pick up the Leo and sort of steer the beam to maintain a lock on the Leo on the satellite, but the panel would be flat and it wouldn't move. A Starlink antenna has to point at a satellite flying across the sky at about 27,000 kilometers per hour, so how does it keep up? While the dish has motors for initial alignment, mechanical movement is far too slow and jerky to actually track the satellite, so instead Starlink uses phased array beam steering, so it's a pretty amazing sort of technology that was innovative, very impressive to be fair, and they use this, they use this to steer the beam in real time, but they also use frequency agility and frequency hopping, which are old methods and techniques that have been used for a long time, but they use these to with great effect, and they use a massive constellation of thousands of satellites, meaning lots of beams to multiple satellites, often visible from any ground location, so this is a pretty cool technology, it's kind of like alien technology really, if you think about, if you actually look at, if you pull apart one of these panels from Starlink, go and have a look on YouTube if you can, if I can find one I'll stick up here, but basically it's a really alien-like structure, and a super impressive but a kit, pretty amazing stuff, and the technologies they use are like actually really impressive, so somebody's lost their door, let's be out here somewhere, really impressive technology, but basically targeted radio swamping would require high-powered jammers precisely aimed, so if you think about what I just said, you've got to come up with a Gemma, high-powered Gemma, because you're talking about getting up into low-war earth orbit, so you need a lot of grunt to get up there, precisely aimed at specific user terminals pointing up, or satellite beams pointing down, so you've got to either be up in the sky pointing down at the terminals, or down on the ground pointing up at the satellites, and even then the effect is likely to be localized rather than a sure there is a way to do this, if you're determined, you'll find a way, in Russia, China, they have sophisticated stuff, these guys are top-notch, probably arguably smarter than the Americans in many regards, so yeah, they know how to do this stuff, they're very, very effective, so around claims to have filled jamming systems against GPS and against radio comms, so they've got some of this sort of stuff, they probably could achieve localized disruption, certainly near borders, they could target key ground stations enough to have an impact on the network, if they were coordinated, a multi-country effort across multiple geographies, then possibly, I mean, I'm just saying possibly, they could have a crack at locally jamming, and maybe if you were able to coordinate with a ground network and have all of these jammers talking to each other, and all basically pointing up and all targeting the constellation in space, then maybe, maybe, but I tell you what, this is a pretty cool stuff, it's very difficult to do this, so would they, let's carry on with this whole concept, would they then try to shoot down these satellites? Yes, basically yes, so in the event of a war, if this is getting pretty freaky, Russia and China absolutely can do anti-Satellite, which means you're basically, you directly, kinetically, or with directed energy attacks, you take out the satellite itself and lower the orbit, so China tested in 2007, a kinetic, what they call an ASAP, which is one of these attack satellites, Russia did the same thing in 2021, it's very bad, it's very bad because every time you take out one of these satellites, it creates a whole lot of crap in the atmosphere, in orbit I should say, so you know, you blow one of these things up and it turns into a billion pieces of metal and in those bits of metal, then spread out right across the orbit, they're floating around in space, so, you know, if you're sending up some sort of thing and you're doing some sort of thing and you're doing some kind of legitimate commercial use and all this sort of stuff, it becomes incredibly difficult when this low-war, orbit area is full of junk, space junk, so very dangerous, so not a good thing to do, very, very bad, it's probably an act of last resort, could happen during a war time, but it's got major problems for everybody, so it's probably not likely to happen, yeah, so I know that it'll happen, but it can happen, they prove that it can happen, so then what can Starlink do? Every, that's the thing, and if you think, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna come up with some clever way of, you know, jamming or doing something, well, you've got to remember that on the other side of the table, there are the Starlink Space X engineers and they are full-middleball, they are full-middleball team, so they have already planned for a lot of these things that we're talking about, do you think they've got access to AI? Absolutely, do you think they've been modeling all these potential attacks? Yes, they have, and do you think they've been building capability to defend against them? Yes, they absolutely have, so, does that mean that they are safe? No, absolutely not, because you do have the pacing thread, which is no joke, so yeah, so it's not, it's not disclosed the door on this, and it's a permanent advantage to Team West, I don't think so, I think it's just a matter of time before we see competing networks from our adverse series, our competitors, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, all of these countries, they have an incentive now to build their own networks to provide that alternative to Space X, so yeah, interesting subject, man, I love it, I just think it's a funny and credible attack thing, so, and as a, you know, from an old radio engineer, I just, I just love it, I can kind of understand some of the concepts that are talking about, the face-to-ray, the beam forming, radio hopping, channel hopping, frequency hopping, all these principles of radio, they don't really change over the years, you know, or beam forming, that's new, I had never heard of that, and face-to-rays were kind of like, you know, aliens sort of tech, but the tear now, it is here, the tear now, but interesting, so, look, I hope you've enjoyed this little discussion about face-to-rays, sounds like something from Star Trek, and Starlink and, yeah, and the advantage that the West has right now in terms of these networks, or this network, I should say, but I think the gap is closing, so it's definitely one to watch, yeah, so yeah, wherever you are in this amazing world of ours, have a great day, bye!