Chinese scientists have modelled how Starlink could be jammed over an area the size of Taiwan – and found it would take an unprecedented scale of coordinated electronic warfare.

When Russian forces rolled into Ukraine in early 2022, one of the first moves by Kyiv was sending a post to Elon Musk on X: Ukraine needs satellite internet.

Within days, thousands of Starlink terminals arrived, restoring command and control across the battlefield despite Russia’s best efforts to black out communications.

Moscow initially tried to jam the signals – and reportedly had some success. But when SpaceX quietly updated its software and reconfigured the constellation, many Russian jammers went silent. The battlefield advantage shifted.

That episode sent shock waves through military circles worldwide – especially in Beijing.

For the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), preparing for a potential campaign over Taiwan means answering an urgent question: how to achieve electromagnetic dominance when the enemy could access a constellation of 10,000-plus satellites that hop, adapt and resist jamming in real time?

A groundbreaking simulation study by Chinese scientists offers the most detailed public analysis to date of how the PLA could attempt to silence one of the most resilient communication systems ever built.

Their findings – published on 5 November in the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Systems Engineering and Electronics – suggest that jamming Starlink across a region as large as Taiwan is technically feasible, but only at an immense scale that would require 1,000 to 2,000 electronic warfare drones.

The peer-reviewed paper, titled Simulation research of distributed jammers against mega-constellation downlink communication transmissions, was written by a team from Zhejiang University and the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) – the latter a top player in China’s defence research.

“The orbital planes of Starlink are not fixed, and the movement trajectories of the constellation are highly complex, with the number of satellites entering the visible area constantly changing,” wrote the team led by BIT defence researcher Yang Zhuo.

“This spatiotemporal uncertainty poses a significant challenge for any third party attempting to monitor or counter the Starlink constellation.”

Traditional satellite communication relies on a handful of large, geostationary satellites fixed above the equator. To block them, the Chinese military just needs to overpower their signal from the ground.

But Starlink is different. Its satellites are low, fast and numerous. A single user terminal does not connect to one satellite – it rapidly hops between multiple ones, creating a mesh network in the sky. Even if you manage to block one signal, the connection jumps to another within seconds, according to the researchers.

Moreover, Starlink uses advanced phased-array antennas and frequency-hopping techniques that adapt in real time, much of which is controlled remotely by SpaceX engineers in the United States.

According to Yang’s team, Starlink could only be countered by a distributed jamming strategy. Instead of relying on a few powerful ground stations, hundreds or thousands of small, synchronised jammers would need to be deployed across the sky – on drones, balloons or aircraft – forming an electromagnetic shield over the battlefield.

Using actual Starlink satellite data, the team simulated the dynamic positioning of satellites over a 12-hour period above eastern China.

They modelled the downlink signal strength from Starlink satellites, reception pattern of user terminals, propagation of interference from ground to sky and sky to ground, and the cumulative effect of multiple jammers hitting the same terminal from different angles.

Then they introduced a grid of virtual jammers, flying at 20 kilometre altitude, spaced between five and nine kilometres apart like a chessboard in the sky.

Each jammer emitted noise at various power levels, mimicking realistic electronic warfare payloads.

Two types of antennas were tested – one with a wide beam which covered more area but spread energy thinly, and a narrow-beam one that was focused and powerful, but required precision.

The simulation calculated, for every point on the ground, whether a Starlink terminal could maintain a usable signal.

Under optimal conditions – using a powerful but costly 26 decibel-watt (dBW) jamming power (400 watt) source, a narrow-beam antenna and seven kilometre spacing – each jammer node suppressed Starlink reception across an average area of 38.5 square kilometres.

Taiwan covers around 36,000 square kilometres.

To blanket the island with reliable Starlink suppression would require at least 935 coordinated interference nodes, and this number does not include redundancy for failures, compensating for terrain such as mountains that block signals and countering Starlink’s future anti-jamming upgrades.

Using a weaker but more affordable 23 dBW power source with five kilometre spacing would double the drone deployment scale to around 2,000 units.

Yang’s team said the results were preliminary because Starlink kept some key technology confidential.

“If it becomes possible in the future to obtain actual measurements of the radiation pattern data of Starlink user terminals, and to acquire empirically measured values of the suppression coefficients for these terminals, it would help achieve more accurate assessment results,” they added.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Republished from _South China Morning Post_, 23 November 2025