News Chinese scientists use Starlink signals to detect stealth aircraft and drones

[Admin]

Chinese scientists have successfully used Starlink satellite signals to detect a moving stealth target during a radar experiment in the South China Sea.

Chinese scientists use Starlink signals to detect stealth aircraft and drones : Read more

 

[Rdslw]

I dont think starlink is necessary mention here, as it should work the same with any EM wave emiter that is abundant in the wild. Issue is range and how many antenas, and how much compute you need for it.
for me it feels like it depends on very short range effects, so it would use a lot of compute 24/7 to warn you when you are already dead.

 

[bit_user]

I dont think starlink is necessary mention here, as it should work the same with any EM wave emiter that is abundant in the wild.

Like what, pulsars? Seriously, I think the idea is that it needs to be in orbit above the thing you want to detect. I doubt the spectrum of pulsar emissions would work for this.

Starlink satellites aren't just orbiting in a haphazard way, they're orchestrated to fly in orbits that space them somewhat evenly over the territories they're meant to cover.

Issue is range and how many antenas, and how much compute you need for it.
for me it feels like it depends on very short range effects, so it would use a lot of compute 24/7 to warn you when you are already dead.

Synthetic aperture radar has always relied on significant amounts of computation, so that's nothing new to the field. This was probably prototyped on a GPU or FPGA. For deployment, they could use a FPGA or even a custom ASIC, in order to achieve the necessary compute performance.

The idea is probably that they'd position these monitoring stations far enough away from targets that they would have advanced warning before the bombs started falling.

I think a key piece of information we don't know is how far off-oxis the aircraft can be, in order to be detected. I assume it doesn't have to fly directly in between the satellite and the receiver, but presumably it can't be too far off the axis between them. So, one key question is just how far?

 

[magbarn]

Let's say the Taiwan issue came to a head, couldn't the US government just force Starlink to shut down?

 

[Specter0420]

So the government just tells Musk he needs to disable the transmissions as they orbit over certain locations at certain times... That may tip China off, but there are ways around that like random outages before the attack. However, China is launching their own constellation system and it'll probably be more purpose driven for these types of uses.

 

[bit_user]

Let's say the Taiwan issue came to a head, couldn't the US government just force Starlink to shut down?

Maybe, but that seems a bit drastic. Millions depend on Star Link, including for things like emergency services.

What I was wondering about is whether the satellites can just go silent above sensitive areas. It seems this little trick depends on them continuously transmitting.

Of course, that only helps as long as other constellations of satellites can't be used. I think China is already planning (maybe even started?) launching a fleet of its own low-altitude satellites. Plus, I wonder how many other satellites can be used, or is there something fairly specific to Star Link satellites, like the RF band they use?

 

[edzieba]

RF Shadow / forward-scatter bistatic and multistatic RADAR has been known for decades, and demonstrated years ago. As long as you have a consistent background source, the technique works. Starlink is nice because its a consistent overhead source, but other sources such as weather RADAR, over-the-horizon emissions (e.g. terrestrial TV and radio), and so on. There are other satellite constellations that can act as RF sources, e.g. Oneweb, Iridium, the various and growing SAR constellations (these are nice because they are VERY high power RF sources), etc.

Let's say the Taiwan issue came to a head, couldn't the US government just force Starlink to shut down?

Given how vital it has proven to be for Ukraine's continued connectivity, and how likely China is to attempt to disrupt undersea telecomms cables to Taiwan, that would be a poor strategic move.

 

[Mattzun]

RF Shadow / forward-scatter bistatic and multistatic RADAR has been known for decades, and demonstrated years ago. As long as you have a consistent background source, the technique works. Starlink is nice because its a consistent overhead source, but other sources such as weather RADAR, over-the-horizon emissions (e.g. terrestrial TV and radio), and so on. There are other satellite constellations that can act as RF sources, e.g. Oneweb, Iridium, the various and growing SAR constellations (these are nice because they are VERY high power RF sources), etc.

Given how vital it has proven to be for Ukraine's continued connectivity, and how likely China is to attempt to disrupt undersea telecomms cables to Taiwan, that would be a poor strategic move.

China already has an over the horizon radar which should have a similar ability to detect stealth aircraft.

It is possible that using Starlink provides better coverage of the approaches to Taiwan, but this seems more like a cheap proof of concept than a military system. China would probably launch its own cheap satellites with a consistent rf source if it depended on the capability. They would probably get better results if the satellite wasn’t providing internet.