- Space
At least 935 synchronised jamming drones would be needed, scientists say
Vishwam SankaranMonday 24 November 2025 05:16 GMTComments
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Chinese scientists appear to have found a way to jam Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite constellation spread over an area the size of Taiwan, a new study shows.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 showed that satellite networks play a crucial role in helping invaded territories maintain their communication lines.
Just days after the war began, Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals reestablished command and control across Ukraine despite Moscow’s efforts to cut Kyiv’s communication lines.
Even when Putin’s forces attempted to jam the satellite communication network, Starlink would update its systems to provide continued assistance to Kyiv. Last year Musk confirmed that SpaceX was "spending significant resources to combat Russian jamming attempts".
Beijing appears to have been taking notes, with a new study attempting to simulate the disruption of a similar Starlink satellite communication system spread over an area the size of Taiwan.
In the research, Chinese scientists attempt to find a way to jam a constellation of 10,000-plus Starlink satellites that hop and adapt in real time.
The study offers insights into how Beijing may try to disrupt satellite communication systems across Taiwan in the event that the People’s Liberation Army invades the island.
It shows that the PLA could achieve this strenuous task on an immense scale using about 1,000 to 2,000 special signal jamming drones.
A Starlink device is pictured which connects the brigade to the internet as servicemen of the 155th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Getty Images)Scientists from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), which consistently contributes to China’s defence research, observe that satellites part of the Starlink constellation continuously change their orbital planes, moving in and out of view at all times.
This creates extreme uncertainty for a military attempting to interfere with their signals, they say.
A terminal on the ground never stays linked to just one satellite, as its connection rapidly switches between several satellites moving fast and forming a constantly shifting mesh, the study noted.
“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,” researchers wrote in the journal Systems Engineering and Electronics.
If an adversarial force jams even one link successfully, the connection jumps to another within seconds, making any interference hard to sustain, they say.
“This spatiotemporal uncertainty poses a significant challenge for any third party attempting to monitor or counter the Starlink constellation,” scientists explained.
Their new simulation suggests the best way to jam such a communication system is a distributed signal blocking strategy using multiple drones.
Instead of conventional methods that use ground-based stations to jam communication satellites, scientists found that jamming a Starlink constellation would require hundreds or thousands of synchronised jammers deployed in a drone swarm.
In the simulation, researchers tested having each jammer drone in a swarm broadcast noise at different power levels.
They estimated that for fully suppressing Starlink over Taiwan, at least 935 synchronised jamming drones would be required.
However, researchers stressed that the findings are preliminary as the exact Starlink anti‑jamming technology remains confidential.
The Independent has reached out to Starlink for a comment.
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