Intelligence agencies suspect Russia is developing anti-satellite weapon to target Starlink service

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/intelligence-agencies-suspect-russia-is-developing-anti-satellite-weapon-to-target-starlink-service

40 Comments

  1. CMDR_omnicognate on

    “And remember kids, the next time someone tells you “the Russians wouldn’t do that!” Oh yes they would.”

  2. bastard_rabbit on

    Would they really target Starlink’s commercial satellites? I’d be more inclined to think they’d target the Starshield satellites used by the military.

  3. Yeah, I’m not gonna worry much about that. Russia is a real-life Bond villain. Big, nefarious plans which they are inevitably unable to complete.

  4. Honest question: What would happen if a Starship fails to achieve orbit and crashes roughly in the middle of the Kremlin?

  5. IndividualSkill3432 on

    Soyuz can get about 7 tonnes to orbit, there are about 100 tonnes of space rocks that hit Earth each day. They would need to launch about 13 just to put one days worth of micrometeorites into orbit. Even putting up 100 tonnes would take years to hit a satellite. It seems to be a wildly unpractical weapon that would consume the entire launch capacity for many years before it had a real noticable effect let alone taking down a mega constellation.

    It really just sounds like a small department has managed to convince someone to fund something just to keep them in a job.

  6. I mean, this is pretty much exactly what people were saying would eventually happen since Starlink was first proposed. Not necessarily that Russia would be first, but that near-earth orbit is getting pretty crowded and intelligence through satellites is going to become an obviously good target when a nation is at war. I am zero percent surprised at this development.

  7. userousnameous on

    Despite it being owned by Musk, Starlink is probably the single greatest threat to regimes like china, nk, and russia. They are the easiest route to open, uncensored information.

    There’s lots of military applications too, and I was in the US government, I would working on technology to kill their uplink/downlink in different regions. I would say we are at a point today where it is way too easy for a nefarious actor or highschool student with off the shelf components to build in-country a locally autonomous but starlink-controlled/guided drone.

  8. issue is one reason the military is looking at large LEO constellations is that because its not a few GEO satellites its much more resilient.. especially with satellite interlinks. You have to take down WAY more satellites…

  9. I’m ready for the end. Let’s just jump to space lasers and nuke each other into dust so billionaires can live in the wasteland they’ve been preparing for.

  10. They better not. My life kind of revolves around Starlink working since I live in a remote location and need the high speed service.

  11. Elon Musk right now: ‘The Russians are trying to take down my satellites?!! After all I’ve done for them?!!’

  12. But wait – Trump will ask Putin about this, who will deny it. And, once again, Trump will believe Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies.

    Trump is a traitor – and pedo, and felon, and racist/xenophobe/misogynist – and, above all, an ignoramus.

  13. As soon as Elon gets wind of this he will shutdown Ukrainian service. Which may be the intent of this story.

  14. Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    |Fewer Letters|More Letters|
    |——-|———|—|
    |[ASAT](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfsiv8 “Last usage”)|[Anti-Satellite weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon)|
    |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfpt6l “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
    |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfanok “Last usage”)|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
    |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfsb75 “Last usage”)|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
    |[ITAR](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfpeic “Last usage”)|(US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations|
    |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfanok “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
    | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|

    |Jargon|Definition|
    |——-|———|—|
    |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfpt6l “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
    |[apogee](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfgsgv “Last usage”)|Highest point in an elliptical orbit around Earth (when the orbiter is slowest)|
    |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1pt8ymo/stub/nvfgsgv “Last usage”)|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|

    Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

    —————-
    ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1pseaqx)^( has 11 acronyms.)
    ^([Thread #12010 for this sub, first seen 22nd Dec 2025, 20:56])
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  15. This really is a fascinating proxy war Russia has decided to engage in. We’ll be seeing more if these accidents on both sides.

    It’s such a shame Putin woke up one morning and decided to choose evil but there you go, we all just have to deal with it now.

  16. I mean this obviously a serious matter, but at the same time I would be quite happy to hear a bunch of Starlink space pollution being taken out of the sky. The way it actually works is fucking awful and will make low earth orbit even worse than it already is.

  17. Russia doesn’t have enough missiles to shoot down all the Starlink satellites. I’d love to see them try. Elon will just put up 100 a day using Starship.

  18. Unless it’s a ground based laser, SpaceX can put them up far faster than Russia can shoot them down. One Falcon 9 launch can put up dozens, but the Russians would have to launch an individual rocket for each one. There are over 9000 of them. Currently all of their rocket production is going into bombing Ukrainian apartment buildings.

  19. please do – this is how we get real life iron man 🙂
    musk on Ketamine in his armor suit blowing up ICBM launchers