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TV emissions don't use beam forming. This is all a cat and mouse game, but Starlink being a distributed system should mean it is harder to completely block use
by ece 9mo ago
TV emissions don't use beam forming. This is all a cat and mouse game, but Starlink being a distributed system should mean it is harder to completely block use of.
- overfeed 9mo agoSee my other comment upthread on how beamforming doesn't make terminals/emissions invisible, just harder to acquire, but well within reach of a determined adversary. Newer Starlink terminals have a 1.5° beam, and older ones are 3.4° wide . At 10,000 feet altitude, the tighter beam is 245 feet across. Starlink satellite orbits are public and predictable, and Iran has drones to spare. This is just 1 passive RF-based approach, and there are others (e.g. drone-mounted FLIR surveys done at 3 am)
- ece 9mo agoLike I said, this is a cat and mouse game, if you had terminals to spare or even just fake battery operated transmitting antennas, you could waste a lot of drone time. There are also masking techniques and it's not like the drones can't be tracked or misguided. It would take orders of magnitude more effort to stop Starlink than to keep using it minimally. Iran is a big country, it just depends on how determined and prepared the protestors are to evade censorship. Which by itself is hopefully just a start to other actions.