Hacker News Reader

Agree with you.

I am damn sure that GPS satellites are a military target! They are even owned by a military organisation. It just so happens that organisation is the most powerful military power in the world. Given that, the next best thing is to jam GPS signals on the ground and I would be very surprised the Russians are not doing it at some scales.

I highly doubt Americans gave the Ukrainians the keys for the special modulation that bypasses usual jamming abilities.

> I would be very surprised the Russians are not doing it at some scales.

They certainly are - https://www.gpsworld.com/ukraine-attacks-changed-russian-gps...

The live map of where GPS is getting some interference - https://gpsjam.org

Yeah I agree that SpaceX's concern is unlikely over potential attacks on their satellites. Not only is SpaceX able to put them up faster than Russia could shoot them down, attacking a Starlink satellite would be an act of war against the US regardless.

I think SpaceX's concern is more related to domestic liability. The US's policy has been that they will not provide offensive aid for attacking into Russia. They've been very careful about the range of the systems they send for that reason.

Unrestricted Starlink is not subject to those range limits. So, if the attacks which went deep into Russian territory involved Starlink mounted to drones, it would essentially be in violation of the US's own stated policy about military aid to Ukraine. Thus far this hasn't caused any trouble, but if something were to happen (eg an escalation), SpaceX might get thrown under the bus by the US government since they aren't contracted by the DoD to provide such service.

Low earth orbit is easy to hit with anti-satellite missiles, can even use ASM-135 which is a interceptor fired from a fighter jet.

GPS altitudes and up are a different story.

There's over 3,500 Starlink satellites.

That likely dramatically exceeds the number of anti-satellite missiles in the entire world, let alone Russia's.

One hit will create thousands of fragments. How many consecutive hits would be necessary to create severe enough Kessler event to destroy most of the Stralink satellites? Dozens?

As everyone knows, the best possible way to deal with an aggressor is just straight appeasement. The risks are so large that appeasement is the only answer. If only we had historically tried appeasing belligerent foreign powers, think what wars would have been avoided... /sarcasm

Replace "an agressor" with "the USA" and that pretty much sums up history.

LOL.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

Most of us alive are thinking of the last 75 years.

Ironically this only further proves the point: US expansionist foreign policy would not have been checked by giving the US what it wanted. There was no version of Iraq complying with the UN which was going to prevent the neo-conservatives from getting their regime change invasion in 2003.

The only preventative measures which would've worked would be diplomatic and economic counter-pressure from the UN and more specifically Europe and other NATO allies, or substantial military build up capable of seriously endangering US conventional forces.

Ukraine would be in a much different military position today if it were a pariah state, as opposed to a nation declaring a strong intent to join both the EU and NATO. Turns out diplomacy, allies and soft-power are actually kind of useful things when you're not the dominant military hegemon.

Yes. The lesson from history is that no appeasement should ever be done. Any war, no matter how small or over how little a thing, MUST ALWAYS BE TOTAL. No war should ever end until one nation enacts genocide on another. Great plan.

So I'm sure you have literally any example of when that worked, historically?

Spoiler: it has never worked. What you are thinking of are diplomatic, economic and military moves and counter-moves or negotiated settlements but the aggressor is always forced to compromise or delayed such that they lose their advantage.

Appeasement - the aggressor making demands and getting them with the idea that they will be then be satisfied - has never worked.

Blowing up dozens of satellites would start a chain reaction that if left unchecked will eventually bring down all of them. But I doubt it would happen over a timeframe that's useful for this war. We arguably are already in a Kessler syndrome situation where fragments are created faster than they deorbit, but like any exponential process it starts out incredibly slow.

Space is big. The average breakup seems to create about 300 fragments [1], so if Russia blows up 100 Starlink satellites that's 30,000 bullets that have to randomly hit another 3500 objects spread over an area roughly the area of the surface of the earth. Except that it's worse because space is 3-dimensional and most bullets will spend little time at that altitude, and eventually deorbit. Over a decade it will do a lot of damage, and at some point things will escalate to a point where it's hard to handle. But Russia needs results within weeks or at most months.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing...

> Space is big.

Satellites are usually in orbit, not randomly in a space, so your target is to make a mess from that given orbit, not to try to mess up whole space.

No it wouldn't bring down all of them. They are not all on the same level and they can raise and lower their level. Debris analysis would be done and the fleet would be commanded to move strategically.

Causing a chain reaction is significantly more difficult then people think.

SpaceX wasn't worried about any of these issues until, mysteriously, "SpaceX" suddenly was coincidental to Elon Musk having his Twitter breakdown when he decided he personally was going to negotiate peace for Ukraine[1] and was promptly rebuffed by the Ukrainian foreign minister.

Then, totally coincidentally[2] suddenly "SpaceX" had very big corporate concerns about how Starlink was used and also wanted more money from the DoD at a higher commercial rate[3] and...

You know, just a whole pile of totally normal coincidences...

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1576969255031296000

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1579094238998171648

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex...

Biden administration decided to halt plans to weaponize space started under Trump. This mothballing decision was made in early 2022 and led to said reactions by Elon.

>SpaceX wasn't worried about any of these issues until...

If they weren't worried about these issues, why are they very explicitly spelled out in the Starlink terms of service?

The issue came up because Ukraine violated the terms of service by using them as command/control of an explosive drone boat system. You're just making things up.

>SpaceX is able to put them up faster than Russia could shoot them down

This doesnt seem correct to me. Building, launching, and positioning replacement satellites to fill gaps in service seems like it would take much more effort and cost than a takedown.

Can you further expand on why you think your claim is accurate?

Russia doesn't have 3500 ASAT missiles and can't build (and launch) them at a rate of ~50 per week (it's estimated that they produce ~50 cruise missiles per month).

Admittedly they don't have to shoot down 3500 sats, probably only the sats in the group servicing Ukraine, but that's still a couple hundred sats and thus, likely more than the Russian ASAT stockpile.

The only two ways I can see to make ASAT logistics work against large constellations like Starlink is if they figure out laser-based ASAT or an in-orbit attack mechanism that shoots multiple cheap missiles/bullets (avoiding expensive separate launch per target). Neither sounds impossible, though.

Yeah it's difficult to envision a truly cost effective ASAT measure, "shooting" bullets is deceptive in that it'd still require carrying the large amount of fuel needed to effectively change orbit (especially for changing inclination) and would be a bit too messy in terms of spread of the resulting debris.

Another interesting and clean approach might be jamming the satellites from orbit. You can't go after all the satellites, but since you can predict which ones will be over when you're doing something important, you can launch vehicles to approach specifically those and jam them at close range.

>Does this imply that GPS satellites are a legitimate military target for Russia right now?

GPS is a US military asset and consequently a military target for hostile actors.

The only thing keeping Russia from just blowing them out of the sky is because to do so would be an unconditional declaration and act of war against the USA.

And because they are using it in their planes and within their units. Sure you can argue with Glonass, but if it is working so well, why SU-34s are using Garmin with GPS instead?

Irrelevant - Garmin can receive GPS, Glonass, Galileo and BeiDou.

>Does this imply that GPS satellites are a legitimate military target for Russia right now?

Of course it does. In the real world, anything is permissible (because there is no global federal government) as long as you have the strength to enforce. In the case of GPS satellite constellation, that is infrastructure owned and operated by the US military, so any attack on those satellites brings Russia directly into conflict with the US and NATO.

>My point being, I don't think "legitimate target" has to do anything with Russia not shooting down any satellites; it's either lack of capacity or fear of retaliation, both being rather orthogonal to the targets "legitimacy" IMO.

Right ... To rephrase: is the US military willing to indemnify Starlink to the same degree if it is attacked by Russia?

You can bet they would retaliate, simply because the game theory aspect of all this implies there needs to be a severe cost associated with damaging US infrastructure. Maybe a huge explosion at some vital oil infrastructure or actually destroying the bridge to Crimea.

>You can bet they would retaliate, simply because the game theory aspect of all this implies there needs to be a severe cost associated with damaging US infrastructure.

It doesn't necessarily imply that that IFF Starlink is providing military assistance to Ukraine, and in response, Russia targets Starlink satellites, that the US will necessarily escalate further. And there is precedence for this. For example, after US assassinated Soleimani, and Iran retaliated against an American base in Iraq (leading to ~100 casualties - though no deaths, and extensive damage to the base itself), America did not further escalate.

According to the anti satellite wiki page, hitting a gps satellite would be difficult and pointless unless you're taking out everything in geo orbit.

GPS says aren't in geosync, they use 12 hour orbits.

Starlink is at 550 km.

A geosynchronous orbit is 37,000 km.

GPS saltines are at 20,000 km.

While not geosynchronous, they're certainly not in the LEO easy to hit target.

This is mentioned in the Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

> US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites orbit at about 800 km (500 mi) high and move at 7.5 km/s (4.7 mi/s), so a Chinese Intermediate-range ballistic missile would need to compensate for 1350 km (840 mi) of movement in the three minutes it takes to boost to that altitude. Even if an ISR satellite is knocked out, the US possesses an extensive array of manned and unmanned ISR aircraft that could perform missions at standoff ranges from Chinese land-based air defences, making them somewhat higher priority targets that would consume fewer resources to better engage.

> The Global Positioning System and communications satellites orbit at higher altitudes of 20000 km (12000 mi) and 36000 km (22000 mi) respectively, putting them out of range of solid-fuelled Intercontinental ballistic missiles. Liquid-fuelled space launch vehicles could reach those altitudes, but they are more time-consuming to launch and could be attacked on the ground before being able to launch in rapid succession. The constellation of 30 GPS satellites provides redundancy where at least four satellites can be received in six orbital planes at any one time, so an attacker would need to disable at least six satellites to disrupt the network.