Chinese military researchers have called for the development of a "hard kill" weapon to destroy Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system, citing the broadband system’s potential military applications and threat to China’s national security.
A team of five senior scientists in China’s defense industry led by Ren Yuanzhen, a researcher with the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications made the call in a paper published last month in the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Modern Defense, reports science news website Live Science.
Starlink is a global satellite internet service provider, owned by Tech Tycoon Elon Musk. Since the first Starlink satellites were launched in 2019, SpaceX has put more than 2,300 of them into low-Earth orbit, and the company plans to send up to 42,000 satellites into space to form a gigantic megaconstellation.
The paper stated that “a combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system.”
The team suggested that military payloads could be launched alongside Starlink satellites, which would require China to upgrade its existing space surveillance systems to take super high-resolution photos to identify any unusual features on the satellites, reports news platform Asia Times.
