Can Starlink be blocked? Scary Chinese simulation shows 1,000 drones can jam satellite internet over an island as large as Taiwan
- A Chinese study shows it’s possible to block out Starlink over Taiwan
- 1,000 to 2,000 drones with jamming equipment could create an ‘electromagnetic shield’ to do this
- Keeping such a drone operation successfully running would be far from easy, though
Chinese scientists have demonstrated how it’s theoretically possible to use a large swarm of drones to block off satellite internet from Taiwan in a simulation of ‘large-scale electronic warfare’.
Tom’s Hardware reports that the study, as highlighted by the (paywalled) South China Morning Post (SCMP), found that plunging the whole of Taiwan into internet darkness would require around 1,000 or possibly up to 2,000 specially adapted jamming drones.
The study was run by the Zhejiang University & Beijing Institute of Technology, and as the SCMP explains: “Hundreds or thousands of small, synchronized jammers would need to be deployed across the sky – on drones, balloons or aircraft – forming an electromagnetic shield over the battlefield.”
Starlink has become a focus for China since Musk’s Starlink satellites were deployed to help Ukraine after it was attacked by Russia in 2022, to reestablish communications on the battlefield.
Denying Starlink in such a total way would not be an easy task, as you might imagine. Musk’s satellites have clever tech on-board and, compared to a typical satellite, their collective ‘mesh network’ nature makes them much more difficult to block out.
The SCMP says that the Chinese scientists used real Starlink data to create a simulation of the positioning of Musk’s satellites over a 12-hour timeframe. They then worked out a grid of jamming drones – using a mixture of wide and narrow-beam electronic noise-generating jammers, flying at an altitude of 12 miles (20km) – so that they successfully blocked the signal to the ground in all areas.
The conclusion was that 935 coordinated drones should create the necessary ‘electromagnetic shield’ to block Starlink out from Taiwan completely. However, lower-power (cheaper) drones could be used instead – deploying around 2,000 would work, according to the report.
Analysis: a costly endeavour to realize
Obviously mobilizing 1,000 or indeed 2,000 drones loaded with specialized jamming equipment is going to be a headache – because it’s not just about that initial deployment in a shield formation, but also keeping those drones in place. That includes switching them out for replacements as needed, as they’ll need to be refuelled in a sustained internet-blocking campaign that’s running for some time.
It wouldn’t be cheap, and it wouldn’t be easy to manage logistically, but China clearly has the wherewithal to achieve this feat, marking a possible new way to leverage technological warfare. The study does rely on some assumptions, including ideal conditions for the drones to operate, while a real-world deployment can end up far from ideal.
And, of course, the targeted island being could take action against these drones. Taiwan has anti-drone equipment, but the jamming drones will be 12 miles in the sky, so taking down a lot of them would not be trivial. It might be costly to field such a drone swarm, but it would also be costly to break this blockade.
At any rate, it isn’t comforting that China is flexing technological warfare muscles in this way, and in conjunction with China’s internet cable-cutting capabilities, as Tom’s Hardware points out, the furrowed brows of those potentially threatened may be multiplying.
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