Chinese military scientists want to take aim at Starlink satellites.
This after a recent paper was published, along reports from the South China Morning Post, which cites the network of internet beaming satellites as posing a potential security risk to Chinese intelligence.
According to said paper, the satellites have a scope for military applications, which apparently necessitates the need for China to develop its own countermeasures against this perceived threat.
The scientists have called for both “hard and soft” skills to be implemented, with the former involving missiles or ballistic attacks and the latter being software to target the operating system of the Starlink network.
Added to this is a call to develop a surveillance system to track every Starlink satellite currently in low orbit, with a concern raised that the satellites could be used to deliver military payloads.
“While Starlink claims to be a civilian program that provides high-speed internet services, it has a strong military background,” a translated version of the aforementioned paper explains.
“When completed, Starlink satellites can be mounted with reconnaissance, navigation and meteorological devices to further enhance the US military’s combat capability in such areas as reconnaissance remote sensing, communications relay, navigation and positioning, attack and collision, and space sheltering,” it adds.
Whether there is indeed any validity to the claims remains to be seen, but it is clear that Chinese scientists are pushing for steps to be taken to counter a threat that may not even exist.
At the time of writing, neither Starlink, SpaceX, nor Elon Musk have issued comments on the paper and report, so it is unclear how this will all pan out and whether the space agencies of China and the US can assist in deescalating the situation.
