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It is no exaggeration to say that Starlink’s low earth orbit satellite communications (LEO SATCOM) service has been one of the most—if not the most—transformative technologies employed in the Russia-Ukraine War. The so-called “first-person view” (FPV) multirotor drones built using commercial off-the-shelf components are, in comparison, rather uninteresting, at least if one views Starlink not as a satellite internet service but a low-cost and widely available low-latency and high-bandwidth non-line-of-sight radio frequency datalink with tremendous military applications. Starlink and LEO SATCOM more generally is a truly transformative technological change, at least until measure-countermeasure dynamics catch up and degrade—likely not wholly negate—the transformative effects of LEO SATCOM.
Starlink’s LEO SATCOM service first became available in October 2020. By the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Starlink was still in its infancy, but nevertheless offered Ukraine something that Russia could not match: a low-cost and widely available low-latency and high-bandwidth non-line-of-sight radio frequency datalink, one that was also difficult to readily degrade through electronic warfare. Through Starlink, the American near-monopoly on LEO SATCOM was never likely to last long. Other Western providers, such as OneWeb, were already developing rival LEO SATCOM constellations. Useful as LEO SATCOM may be to China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was always unlikely to make itself reliant on foreign commercial LEO SATCOM providers, which can deny service over areas of interest to China and to China-linked terminals. Chinese industry is, however, developing two massive LEO SATCOM constellations of its own, namely the Guowang and Qianfan, and Chinese industry is also advancing reusable satellite launch vehicles (SLVs) in the vein of those employed by SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, with the aim of lowering launch costs and facilitating launches at a similar scale and cadence to SpaceX. China is, as such, rushing toward deploying its own analogues to Starlink, and the pertinent question for Taiwan is when—not if—the PLA will begin to take advantage of the many benefits of a low-cost and widely available low-latency and high-bandwidth non-line-of-sight radio frequency datalink in the form of LEO SATCOM.
Chinese LEO SATCOM constellations pose an immense risk to Taiwan, not least on account of Taiwan’s geography: the Taiwan Strait is, at its narrowest points, just 130-180 kilometers wide, and Taiwan’s western coastal plain tends to have a depth of just 25-35 kilometers. LEO SATCOM is one of two ways through which the PLA can employ many of the same approaches that Russia and Ukraine employ against one another against Taiwan.
LEO SATCOM also poses much greater threats to Taiwan beyond cross-strait strike dynamics. LEO SATCOM has the potential to fundamentally transform China’s regional strike capabilities, which is to say vis-a-vis Japan, the Philippines, and, among others, the United States throughout the Western Pacific as well as, more generally, essentially anywhere in the world. A low-latency and high-bandwidth non-line-of-sight radio frequency datalink allows essentially anything and everything to be teleoperated. LEO SATCOM will bolster Chinese external operations capabilities against Taiwan and other countries. It will allow China to attack Taiwan through novel means and, no less importantly, from novel directions/threat vectors against which Taiwan’s defences are not prepared. The proverbial genie is already out of the bottle, and Chinese LEO SATCOM already exists in the form of satellites in orbit. The only uncertainty concerns how many Chinese LEO SATCOM satellites will be in orbit by the time that a major war breaks out in the Pacific over the fate of Taiwan.
All of the following dynamics will be affected by the availability of LEO SATCOM to the PLA:
