Or for a satellite top be a legit target the communication needs to be two-way? In such case I suspect Türksat satellite should be considered within scope, since Bayraktar TB2S (which reportedly has been used by Ukraine in this war) uses it for SATCOM.
What about other military uses of Starlink, outside of guidance systems? Those are plentiful, and it's hard to see why there would be a drastic difference between guiding a drone and providing communication backbone for military operation coordination in the eyes of the Russians. After all, they are bombing civilian infrastructure just fine, and didn't even care to formally declare this "special military operation" a war...
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
GPS altitudes and up are a different story.
That likely dramatically exceeds the number of anti-satellite missiles in the entire world, let alone Russia's.
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...
Causing a chain reaction is significantly more difficult then people think.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I’m sure there are additional costs for Starlink operations in Ukraine vs other countries, such as extra measures against jamming etc so the operation is less profitable in Ukraine than elsewhere.
And from what I understand there are some terminals that work without a subscription (although I haven’t seen any info about them specifically).
But it’s not free for many users in Ukraine.
[1]: https://wccftech.com/ukrainians-are-paying-for-starlink-them...
I'm sure spacex won't want to go down that route, but it's not a good tactic for Russia.
Considering that StarLink satellites have a orbital period of ~95 minutes, I doubt that debris fields de-orbiting "very quickly" as you so precisely put it will be quick enough.
And even so, just shotgun your payload of tungsten flechettes into a orbit a bit higher than the satellites and let gravity do the rest.
I'm sure people smarter than me have considered these scenarios and done the economic math.
The way orbit mechanics works, if you impart energy on an object at just one point in its orbit, the orbit will change overall but still go through that point. Some debris will be put in an elliptical orbit where it will start crossing higher altitudes, but will also still cross the original altitude, causing it to be affected by drag and eventually deorbit.
The worry is what it would damage until it comes down. At some debris density you start setting off a chain reaction (and arguably we are already there, it's just very slow right now)