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I candidly thought it wasn’t possible to block Starlink. I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.

by hartator 9mo ago

drivingmenuts 9mo ago
[flagged]
- fridek 9mo ago
  Who is "we" and "them"? Don't you find it ironic, such a comment on a thread about protesting a regime which tries to control who does what?
- TMWNN 9mo ago
  Starlink has no ground stations on Iranian soil and is formally prohibited by its government, so there is nothing being "provided" to Iran, per se. Iranians smuggle Starlink dishes in, at great personal risk.
jeroenhd 9mo ago
If it were impossible, China would've had reason to blow up their satellites in orbit. The US would do the same thing for Chinese satellite ISPs. Jamming on such a large scale is expensive, but it's hardly impossible.
- gordonhart 9mo ago
  There’s no evidence that China (or anybody else) has the capacity to meaningfully harm the 9000+ satellite Starlink constellation.
  - RandomLensman 9mo ago
    Debris creating debris creating debris ... ?
    - SXX 9mo ago
      Only if they want to kill 99% of all sattelites since this is a game that can be played together.
    - RickJWagner 9mo ago
      Yes, I’ve seen this! It was a small, triangular ship that blasted big asteroids, which in turn spun off and collided with other asteroids…
NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
The title is wrong, as usual. This is a re-hash of earlier reports. Starlink is getting 30-80% packet loss, depending on where they're using it. Likely local jammers. But it still gets through.
iberator 9mo ago
Jamming or hijacking geostationary satellites signal is trivial for literally a team of 3 hm radio veterans with 10+ years of experience. Jamming RF is easy in general. Nowadays we can even do beamforming so i guess it would be trivial.
snickerbockers 9mo ago
There's a difference between possible and plausible. In the most absurd case, it was always a given that a sufficiently large faraday cage or a literal iron dome would block starlink from reaching anybody in iran therefore it was never thought to be impossible to block starlink. At best it's implausible but that would refer specifically to the construction of the giant faraday cage and the literal iron dome, not the concept of blocking starlink.
DivingForGold 9mo ago
The Russians have developed rather efficient GPS jamming equip., as we know, Iranian Gov't is partners with Russians, providing drone technology, so no great mystery where likely the jammers originated from.
redwall_hp 9mo ago
Any satellite signal is going to be relatively weak compared to what you can produce on the ground. Inverse square law, and power limitations of a mobile transmitter. It's fairly trivial to set up a transmitter that saturates a slice of spectrum at an amount of power that is ridiculous compared to a satellite signal. There are still AM radio stations operating that go as high as 50kW. The satellite transmitters aren't going to exceed maybe a hundred Watts, at a great distance, and that falls off at 1/(distance)^2.

I candidly thought it wasn’t possible to block Starlink. I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.

drivingmenuts 9mo ago

[flagged]

fridek 9mo ago
Who is "we" and "them"? Don't you find it ironic, such a comment on a thread about protesting a regime which tries to control who does what?
TMWNN 9mo ago
Starlink has no ground stations on Iranian soil and is formally prohibited by its government, so there is nothing being "provided" to Iran, per se. Iranians smuggle Starlink dishes in, at great personal risk.

jeroenhd 9mo ago

If it were impossible, China would've had reason to blow up their satellites in orbit. The US would do the same thing for Chinese satellite ISPs. Jamming on such a large scale is expensive, but it's hardly impossible.

gordonhart 9mo ago
There’s no evidence that China (or anybody else) has the capacity to meaningfully harm the 9000+ satellite Starlink constellation.
- RandomLensman 9mo ago
  Debris creating debris creating debris ... ?
  - SXX 9mo ago
    Only if they want to kill 99% of all sattelites since this is a game that can be played together.
  - RickJWagner 9mo ago
    Yes, I’ve seen this! It was a small, triangular ship that blasted big asteroids, which in turn spun off and collided with other asteroids…

NitpickLawyer 9mo ago

The title is wrong, as usual. This is a re-hash of earlier reports. Starlink is getting 30-80% packet loss, depending on where they're using it. Likely local jammers. But it still gets through.

iberator 9mo ago

Jamming or hijacking geostationary satellites signal is trivial for literally a team of 3 hm radio veterans with 10+ years of experience. Jamming RF is easy in general. Nowadays we can even do beamforming so i guess it would be trivial.

snickerbockers 9mo ago

There's a difference between possible and plausible. In the most absurd case, it was always a given that a sufficiently large faraday cage or a literal iron dome would block starlink from reaching anybody in iran therefore it was never thought to be impossible to block starlink. At best it's implausible but that would refer specifically to the construction of the giant faraday cage and the literal iron dome, not the concept of blocking starlink.

DivingForGold 9mo ago

The Russians have developed rather efficient GPS jamming equip., as we know, Iranian Gov't is partners with Russians, providing drone technology, so no great mystery where likely the jammers originated from.

redwall_hp 9mo ago

Any satellite signal is going to be relatively weak compared to what you can produce on the ground. Inverse square law, and power limitations of a mobile transmitter. It's fairly trivial to set up a transmitter that saturates a slice of spectrum at an amount of power that is ridiculous compared to a satellite signal. There are still AM radio stations operating that go as high as 50kW. The satellite transmitters aren't going to exceed maybe a hundred Watts, at a great distance, and that falls off at 1/(distance)^2.