Comment by ece
6 hours ago
Doesn't Starlink use some sort wideband signal which is hard to jam? Combined with some sort of frequency hopping and a moving constellation should mean blocking a user or satellite signal should be pretty hard, like many times the cost of building and servicing a user terminal for use against protesters.
> Doesn't Starlink use some sort wideband signal which is hard to jam?
It probably is hard to jam, but you don't need to jam it if you can pinpoint terminal locations and send in on-the-ground enforcers to confiscate the equipment and make arrests. TV detector vans were introduced in 1952[1], the principles for finding sources of RF emissions isn't cutting edge technology.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van
TV emissions don't use beam forming. This is all a cat and mouse game, but Starlink being a distributed system should mean it is harder to completely block use of.
See my other comment upthread on how beamforming doesn't make terminals/emissions invisible, just harder to acquire, but well within reach of a determined adversary. Newer Starlink terminals have a 1.5° beam, and older ones are 3.4° wide . At 10,000 feet altitude, the tighter beam is 245 feet across. Starlink satellite orbits are public and predictable, and Iran has drones to spare.
This is just 1 passive RF-based approach, and there are others (e.g. drone-mounted FLIR surveys done at 3 am)
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