There has been a lot of propaganda flying around about Russia and China’s Fractional Orbit Bombardment Systems (FOBS) and hypersonic self-propelled missiles and Boost Glide Vehicle (BGV) weapons systems, claiming that their respective weapons systems are invisible to traditional arc-launch ICBM early warning systems and are virtually unstoppable by interceptor missile’s.
At one time, as in last year, that might have been true, but it’s not now, that’s the root cause. Russia and China have spent vast amounts of capital and resources to develop the hybrid offensive military assets that are not as invisible or intercept-proof as they claim, and it’s all because of StarLink.
Regular satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) are geostationary at about 621 miles above earth, Starlink is in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at about 341 miles above earth, and the International Space Station is 253 miles above earth. Hypersonic Boost Glide Vehicles operate around 150 miles above the earth in fractional orbit, as a result, the StarLink mega constellation is the lowest LEO system, but it has line-of-site vision that can detect and track any type of missile or rocket that is launched between StarLink and earth.
StarLink’s biggest commercial customer is the Department of Defense, who uses the constellation as a military platform because StarLink is not just a communications platform, it’s a highly- sophisticated multi-sensor, multi-modal, massively distributed centralized interconnected network of thousands of satellites. So, instead of one satellite tracking one missile, there are hundreds of satellites tracking one missile, and communicating extremely accurate telemetry data to terrestrial stations on earth.
The 4 new V2 military surveillance satellites that SpaceX has built, under DoD contract, as well as, the 1,200 250kg “smallsats” deployed monthly on the SpaceX Falcon 9 reusable re-entry vehicles, has further diminished both nations stealth and evasion capabilities, essentially making the hypersonic and fractional orbit missiles just as visible as a traditional missile.
That really pissed them off and now they want to destroy it.
