This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Good article. Very interesting.
TL;DR: Starlink recievers use methods to make it so they don't have to be directly positioned at satellites; this in turn leaves them vulnerable to "side lobe jamming" and GPS spoofing. The suggestion is to point them directly and cover them i.e. in a pit or in a cavity of some such so that the jamming / spoofing doesn't reach it.
Thanks for actually discussing the article instead of feeding the trolls
It sounds like the downside here would be that you loose reliability in your connection. Probably fine for most things.
Seems like they’ve already lost the reliability anyway due to the jamming
Yeah, you lose reliability. If you put the antenna in a pit it will be limited in its beamforming capability. This restricts the number of visible satellites, leading to situations where no satellites are visible.
Iran is the most sanctioned country in the world yet 50,000 Starlink terminals somehow made their way in.
it turns out the not CIA run "National Endowment for Democracy" paid for them
I mean, if you want to promote division within a country, ensuring that countries citizenry has access to your propaganda is pretty important.
What the shit is up with the forced tracking cookies on this site?
The aim is to prevent as many images and news as possible from reaching the public, which is why the Iranian government is blocking communication network.
No. The aim is to prevent cyber attacks and coordinated sabotage by drone warfare, like Israel used in June in the first hours of their attack, and like the US did when they kidnapped Maduro.
Eh? You don’t need open internet for drone attacks.
I should have clarified. Israel used drones smuggled in by agents, and remote-controlled using the internet, to disable air defenses and infrastructure in the first stage of their attack.
Net positive, fuck Starlink and fuck Musk. Time to learn from the persians and block your neighbouring Starlink hardware.
Some peoples only access to reliable Internet is starlink.
I don't like musk at all, but until there's a reliable alternative, it may be the only thing people have access to.
This is an argument for community run fiber, not for Musk.
What is going to happen when countries decide that they don't want starlink satellites over thei air space and start to blow them up?
It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?
Given that space isn't owned by any one country, and Starlink is a US company, whose services are used by the US government, there's a very good chance there would be military retaliation.
It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?
Only two countries have demonstrated air launched rockets that can destroy satellites on orbit, the USA and Russia. There is good speculation that China has built anti-satellites satellites, but no one is aware of any actual proven test.
Here's the USA's anti-satellite rocket being launched on its one and only test:
Now, lets assume that all 3 countries decide they want to attack Starlink satellites at once with all their weapons. Perhaps they destroy 30 satellites in total. As of November 2025 the Starlink network surpassed 10,000 satellites in orbit. As for replacing the lost satellites, a single launch places 25 to 28 satellites in orbit at a time. Within the next 24 hours 25 more Starlink satellites will be launched:
In 4 days, another launch is occurring that will place 24 more Starlink satellites in orbit.
So destroying a few dozen Starlink satellites might cause a slight blip in coverage for maybe a few minutes tops in specific narrow geographic locations, but only for a little while until replacements move to positions.
Didn't China demonstrate last year that a land-based launch destroyed a satellite in space?
Look up Kessler syndrome for an answer as to what may happen if starlink satellites were attacked, although I think I recall people more knowledgeable than me stating this orbit is low enough where it may not be a permanent issue. Nations only control their airspace up to the Karman line which is 100km up. Starlink satellites are well beyond that.
Very hard to do. You need to be able to launch to the same orbits as the satellites and Starlink uses thousands of satellites, almost all of which will at some point fly over those countries. So they'd need to shoot them all down.
