It has been two months since SpaceX and the Philippine government reached an agreement to allow the Philippines to use Starlink, and SpaceX has completed the adjustment of Starlink satellites, and now the Starlink system has fully achieved coverage of the entire Philippines.
In fact, for the Philippines, this choice is completely unavoidable. As a modern nation, achieving national access to belonging is the foundation of the foundation. Unfortunately, the Philippines does not have the basic conditions to achieve this foundation.
China's side is a mainland country, which can realize the connection of the Internet high-speed channel by pulling the network line across the country. But the Philippines is an island nation with more than 7,000 islands, and it is very difficult to achieve Internet connectivity, and the cost of this is even frowned by China, which is known as an infrastructure maniac. After all, you can build a lot of cross-sea cables, but if every network cable is a cross-sea cable, whether it is the price or the amount of work, it is a little too scary.
Therefore, network interconnection through satellite is almost the only option in the Philippines. According to the official news of Space X, in 2020, in the Bate test of the Philippine Starlink network, the Philippines' network speed performed well, and some remote islands and remote villages can also effectively receive high-speed Internet signals.
If only the system were to provide high-speed Internet to civilian facilities in the Philippines. But the fact is that Starlink also has extraordinary significance in strategy and tactics.
When the Russian-Ukrainian war first began, the Russian side directly destroyed Ukraine's Internet base station, basically cutting off Ukraine's cyber warfare information warfare capabilities. At this time, the two Starlink base stations provided by NATO have become the lifeline of Ukraine's network.
The entire Russian-Ukrainian war in Ukraine relied on the battlefield informationized command and informationized mobilization realized by the Star Alliance.
Of course, in the latter stages of the war, a small controversy broke out between Ukraine and SpaceX.
It is that the Ukrainian side once accused Musk of interrupting Starlink for a period of time when they attacked the Russian Navy, so that Ukraine could not successfully achieve its tactical goals.
Because of this matter, Zelensky once accused Musk of treason and betrayal of Ukraine. Regarding this matter, Musk gave two responses, one is that Starlink is a civilian device, not a military equipment, SpaceX has no right to interfere in the war between the two countries, and Starlink has not been open to the Ukrainian Navy. Another response was Musk's statement that he was an American and only responsible to the U.S. government and had no obligations to Ukraine, so the treason accusation was false.
Of course, just recently, Musk's biography included the claim that Musk secretly ordered his engineers last year to shut down Starlink satellite communications network services off the coast of Crimea in order to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet.
In a way, this is also Musk's hammer that the attack is really related to him.
We also have to look at this matter the other way around, that is, Starlink, which can really provide an asymmetric advantage for the weaker side in a war.
Starlink's data comes from satellites. That is to say, traditional interference methods are basically ineffective against Starlink. At the same time, the precise positioning capability of Starlink satellites cannot be denied. Plus Musk really closed Starlink in order to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russia. This proves that the satellite can provide precise coordinate guidance for decapitation operations.
That's pretty scary.
As an interactive platform for dual-use information, Starlink covers the entire Philippines, which is very close to the mainland South China Sea. It is impossible to rule out the possibility of spying China when the United States provides Internet services to the Philippines. Once Starlink also achieves all-round coverage of the South China Sea, then the South China Sea Fleet, at least the surface ships, is equivalent to information disclosure. After all, Starlink has tens of thousands of satellites, even if it is only a part of the Philippines that has hundreds or even thousands of satellites, it is not impossible to conduct one-on-one monitoring of Chinese surface ships through high-density satellite deployment.
So how can China fight Starlink? The answer is to use magic against magic and Starchain against Starchain.
As early as 2020, the mainland has applied for a satellite constellation frequency application involving 12,992 satellites and 308 orbital surface code GW. Since we have no way to deal with Starlink, after all, in peacetime we cannot directly hit satellites, and satellite signals are not easy to shield, then I will use your way against you, I also launch a large number of satellites, against me, I also against you. At the same time, it is much easier for satellites to start. This is the continent's GW constellation plan. Since passive defense has no future, then it is only possible to take the initiative.
It is indeed noteworthy that the Americans used the Philippines as a pedal to deploy Starlink intensively in the Asia-Pacific region, but this does not mean that China has no power to fight back.