The US satellite constellation Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, could be targeted by China, which is building its own equivalent system, an influential US think tank has warned in a new report.
According to the Rand Corporation, the US Space Force should prepare for potentially more provocative operations in space from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
“The USSF should anticipate and develop policies that address an evolving escalation dynamic in which the PLA takes advantage of a US-China vulnerability gap in space to harass US systems,” it said in a report titled “Chinese Military Views of Low Earth Orbit.”
The think tank also said that the PLA “probably believes it can prosecute more provocative operations against the US without risk of escalation.”
Nevertheless, even though Starlink seems to have shaped Chinese views around low earth orbit maneuvers and could be held as a model for the capabilities the PLA wants to develop its own constellation, China has tended to “exaggerate and catastrophize” the threat of Starlink, said the researchers.
The PLA, according to the Rand Corporation, seems to insist that Starlink satellites carry electronic warfare payloads, can intercept hypersonic missiles, or “serve as a co-orbital kinetic kill vehicle targeting other satellites.”
There’s no evidence indicating such capabilities. But because of these inflated threat perceptions, China has now designated the development of Project SatNet, intended to function as “China’s Starlink,” as a national priority.
“Given the highly militarized view that PLA leaders have of Starlink and explicit PLA discussions of a proliferated constellation as a potential countermeasure for Starlink, Project SatNet will be a militarized pLEO (proliferated low earth orbit) capability intended to support PLA warfighting capabilities,” the report says.
According to the researchers, there’d be no point for the Pentagon planners to try to manage Chinese threat perceptions regarding the US and Starlink – they’re “already ossified and unlikely to soften with US assurances or carefully managed messaging.”
On the contrary, the Rand Corporation – which was the epitome of cold-blooded ruthlessness and, according to its critics, the place to dream up new ways for America to wage wars – says the US should anticipate and be ready to counter disinformation campaigns directed towards the Pentagon and the Space Force.
“The CCP (the Chinese Communist Party) and PLA make little, if any, distinction between public and private assets in space and consider the commercially owned Starlink to be a tool of US military power,” the report assesses.
The warning from the Rand Corporation comes after a US Space Force general said that China was now practicing coordinated satellite maneuvers that look a lot like classic aerial combat.
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