Comment by Havoc
1 year ago
In the long run that could become a massive strategic advantage for the US. A 2nd layer of resilience over undersea cables
1 year ago
In the long run that could become a massive strategic advantage for the US. A 2nd layer of resilience over undersea cables
Real time video and telemetry for military drones that’s nearly immune to electronic warfare counter measures is the real end game. The fpv drone carnage in Ukraine is currently limited to the contact lines plus or minus a few kilometers. Satellite comms change that drastically. Yes it’s available now but highly restricted.
But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.
How feasible is it though once the network reaches a huge size? Starlink satellites are tiny, and they've been deploying thousands of them over the last few years. I imagine it would take enormous resources to shoot them down, especially if the US does treat them like a strategic resource and adds more for redundancy.
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Yes effectively immune to missiles. SpaceX launches a new batch of 22 satellites on average every 4-5 days right now and if needed can launch a new batch every 3 days. You'd have to shoot down thousands of satellites to create enough of a service gap, and keep shooting down the new ones. And the problem is only getting harder with time. Unless you're building up an armada of thousands of anti-satellite missiles that you need to maintain at the ready to do this task, you're not really taking the system down.
I should add that anti-satellite missiles are _large_ missiles. The missiles of this size in the US arsenal are SM-3 missiles (or larger). The number even the US has is only in the high hundreds to possibly low thousands. That's completely out of the ability of Russia. It's maybe possible for China but not in their current stockpiles.
There's no way Russia can afford to make a significant dent in the number of Starlink satellites, even assuming their ASAT missiles aren't mostly filled with water rather than rocket fuel as a result of corruption.
Missiles are expensive compared to tiny, cheap satellites.
Laser beams are also the replacement for ASAT.
A privately-held strategic advantage?
It doesn't really matter who owns it as long as it can be bent towards national goals when it matters.
American vehicle manufacturing was a strategic advantage during WWII because they swiftly pivoted to selling tanks to the government instead of cars to civilians.
It's already been bent towards missile defense https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
Like all other US defense companies, why not? Do you think US Navy produces their own ships?
The distinction here is that ships are built by nongovernmental private enterprises, whilst Starlink is operated by a nongovernmental private enterprise. With a somewhat volatile executive.
Which isn't unprecedented. But it's also far from the equivalence your comment suggests.
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Note that, historically, the US Navy had plenty of its own shipyards, and did produce many of its own ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_Navy_sh...
But that's mostly been "optimized away" in more-recent times, in the name of Capitalism and Campaign Donations.
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Plenty of US strategic advantages are privately held or otherwise very dependent on the private sector. It's fine because the company can't really leave the US.
At that level of strategic usefulness ownership stops mattering if shit hits the fan. It'll simply get commandeered.
Offloading the risk on private players, reduces the amount of government investment required, and shields them from any criticism, should the project fail.
Also, if it is that strategically important, the government can just buy SpaceX.
They probably wouldn't have to buy them, if there's a war on they probably have enough legal tools to just require SpaceX to sell them whatever capabilities they have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
Assuming imminent domain and pursuant seizure.
A strategic advantage depending on the whims of a single provate company.
Sounds great, what could possibly go wrong?