Beijing has discovered an unexpected adversary, after Putin’s offensive. For China, which has its eye on Taiwan, the war in Ukraine is rich in lessons. Are the West aligned? What sanctions has this aggression triggered? What weapons are being used? And there, vertigo… a new actor is shaking up the art of war: Starlink.
Elon Musk’s satellite constellation is now much more than a convenient internet service for residents of poorly connected regions. It has become a major military asset. Telecom networks are the first targets in times of war. Paralyzing them cripples a country’s economy. And weakens its ability to resist in a coordinated manner. But constellations like Starlink make it easy to bring or restore this connectivity to an area. All you have to do is ship small, easy-to-install antennas there.
“The war in Ukraine demonstrated the value of these low-Earth orbit constellations to a country’s national security. China wants to ensure that it has similar capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), based in Washington.
China’s interest in these constellations became even more visible on August 6, 2024, with the launch of 18 Qianfan satellites — the first of a constellation that is to number 1,296. As Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault, a CNRS doctoral student specializing in Chinese commercial space, explains, this project “involves new players outside of traditional space. Unlike China SatNet (also called “Guowang”), the other mega constellation project, it does not emanate from the central state. The company in charge of the project, Shanghai Danxing, is partly financed by local investment funds from the Shanghai region. The manufacturer, Genesat, is a joint venture from the Chinese Academy of Sciences” (CAS).
Qianfan, also called “G60”, is officially not military, but it is undeniable that the war in Ukraine has accelerated the development of mega constellations and sharpened the government’s interest. “Since the use of Starlink in Ukraine, the development of constellations has become a national priority. In addition, commercial space was described as a ‘new productive force of quality’ at the last plenum, giving it a place within the state strategy that relies on high technologies for the development and competitiveness of the country,” adds Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault.
“Armies that do not have constellations will be downgraded”
Highly mobilized on the subject, China also asked the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2020 to allocate frequencies for Guowang, which should include 13,000 satellites. For the time being, this other Chinese constellation project seems to be developing more slowly than expected. “Qianfan, a regional project, seems to have, at least temporarily, stolen the limelight from a national project, which confirms the emergence of a new commercial space model in China with a diversity of actors,” observes Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault.
In addition to its role in Internet access, Qianfan is to help China secure access to frequencies and orbits, limited resources allocated by the ITU on a “first come, first served” basis. “This is an important sovereignty issue for China, which has long denounced the functioning of the ITU as disadvantageous for developing countries.”
This question of sovereignty is all the more important because in times of war, these low-orbit satellites have many advantages. They are hard to jam: their signal is mobile and stronger than that of a device in geostationary orbit. “And if the enemy disrupts their operation, they can be reconfigured quickly,” explained Antoine Bordes, vice-president of the defense AI specialist Helsing, to us last June.
The fact that these constellations are made up of a large number of satellites – already 6,000 in orbit for Starlink and 42,000 eventually – also makes them more resilient: even if a few devices were to be attacked and destroyed, others could take over.
Their transmission speed finally opens the way to new uses. The detection of hypersonic missiles, for example. These devastating weapons, which travel five times faster than sound, are difficult to detect from the ground. But at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, classic geostationary satellites take almost half a second to receive and retransmit information. In other words, an eternity. With a latency ten to fifteen times reduced, low-orbit satellites are, on the other hand, good allies. They will therefore make it possible to exchange more and more tactical information, from a fighter pilot, for example, to other planes, soldiers on the ground and even the general staff.
“Tomorrow’s armies will be divided into two categories: those that have constellations of this type and those that do not. The latter will be downgraded. Or they will subscribe to the services of other countries but will therefore not have control over their military data. There is a major sovereignty issue,” explained General Philippe Steininger, associate researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris) and military advisor to the president of the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes) to L’Express in July.
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China has understood this well. From 2022, recalls Reutersresearchers from the Chinese Army’s Military Engineering University (ALP) warned of the “excellent performance” of this constellation, calling on China to “urgently” develop devices capable of destroying, or at least disabling, this type of satellite. If a conflict broke out in Asia, they warned, “the United States and the Europeans would probably use Starlink massively.”
China could also use its constellation to advance its geopolitical interests — including providing access to allied countries. “China sees digital services, such as satellite internet, as an extension of its Belt and Road Initiative to extend its influence around the world, particularly in the Global South,” Swope said. “Satellite internet will be another tool China uses to exert economic and political influence in other countries. Russia, for example, may want access to satellite internet provided by China.”
Nevertheless, in the battle of space constellations, the United States is “at least five years ahead”, according to the CSIS expert. Not only did Elon Musk’s company put its first Starlink satellites into orbit in 2019, but with the Falcon it has reusable launchers that are as efficient as they are economical. In the longer term, its future Starship should even have the capacity to embark and launch hundreds of Starlink satellites at a time. A major advantage because the components of these constellations must be regularly replaced. “Amazon’s Kuiper constellation project should also be launched this year”, specifies Clayton Swope.
If China has the technical means to put satellite constellations into orbit, the question of launch capacities arises. The country can count on its “Long March” launchers, including the “6A” model, active since 2022, capable of carrying 4,000 kilos of payload, but China only has a limited number of launch pads. “Alliances are being formed to build new launch pads, supported at the provincial level,” says Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault. In the meantime, “the hope of commercial launch companies, which are directing their communication in this direction, is to fill their order books by deploying these new constellations.”
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