Could the US military dominate space via Starlink’s satellite network?

Name: China joins elite club of countries that have reached Mars
Uploaded: 2022-05-06T03:00:19.000Z
Duration: 3 min 8 s
Description: China joins elite club of countries that have reached Mars

A commentary in the official newspaper of Chinese armed forces suggests the world should be on high alert for the risk

Starlink could allow the US military to gain ‘situational awareness while keeping adversaries in the dark’

Reading Time:2 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a batch of 53 Starlink internet satellites lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida last month. Photo: Ap

Jack Lau

Published: 11:00am, 6 May 2022Updated: 11:53am, 6 May 2022

The international community should be on high alert for the US Armed Forces’ potential domination of outer space via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet system, the official newspaper of the Chinese military said on Thursday.

“The Starlink project has decided to increase the planned 12,000 satellites to 42,000, underscoring that it is widely distributed, flexible and could be reconfigured quickly,” a PLA Daily commentary said.

“The ambition to militarise Starlink and its barbaric expansion deserve high alert from the international community.”

China has raised concerns about Starlink before, complaining to a UN space committee in December that its Tiangong space station had had two near-misses with Starlink satellites.

Chinese military observers have also said Beijing is increasingly concerned about the United States having a head start in space, which militaries are watching closely as a future battlefield.

Private firms from Canada to Germany have begun testing or are already operating low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet services with government support, but China – which heavily relies on state-owned enterprises for military technology – is still in the early stages of developing the technology.

03:08

China joins elite club of countries that have reached Mars

The PLA Daily commentary said that once completed, Starlink could allow the US military to gain situational awareness while keeping adversaries in the dark, providing seamless global and around-the-clock reconnaissance and surveillance services to its users.