China and Russia Are Developing a Joint Plan to Counter Starlink, Leaked Documents Show

A cache of leaked documents reviewed by three European news organizations reveals that China and Russia have been quietly coordinating on strategies to degrade or destroy SpaceX's Starlink satellite network, underscoring the growing militarization of commercial space infrastructure.

The investigation, conducted jointly by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, found evidence of structured cooperation extending well beyond previously acknowledged levels. Among the documents were slideshows presented at a previously undisclosed China-Russia Military-Technical Cooperation Forum held in 2023. A sixth such bilateral gathering is scheduled for later this year in St. Petersburg, the publications said.

"The documents show a partnership that has moved well beyond shared rhetoric into a structured, multi-disciplinary program to build weapons neither country could develop alone," the three outlets wrote.

The cooperation spans integrated air and missile defense systems, autonomous loitering munitions, next-generation armored vehicles, and military aviation — with Starlink counter-strategies representing one specific focus area.

Two employees of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the state-owned enterprise that directs China's launch vehicle and satellite development, delivered a presentation at the 2023 forum devoted entirely to countering Starlink. The researchers proposed a three-step "escalation ladder" beginning with legal and diplomatic pressure — invoking collision risks in low Earth orbit — before moving to more direct technical measures.

Defeating Starlink would not be straightforward. The network currently comprises more than 10,000 satellites interconnected through laser communications links, with numerous ground stations tying the constellation to the terrestrial internet. Destroying a handful of satellites or a single ground station would have limited impact on overall operational capacity.

The CASC researchers acknowledged this resilience, framing Starlink's presence in low Earth orbit as a "blockade" — a characterization the European outlets noted "lets the authors present an assault on the network as self-defense rather than aggression."

Former defense officials and space security analysts who spoke with Ars Technica said the findings were serious but not entirely surprising, given Starlink's demonstrated battlefield value.

Starlink has provided a documented military advantage to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, extending the effective range of Ukrainian weapons systems. The United States military has also integrated Starlink and its military-grade derivative, Starshield, into its planning for potential large-scale conflicts.

"China, in particular, has been concerned about Starlink for years, from an economic perspective as well as potential national security perspectives," said Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel and director of space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. "The collaboration between China and Russia on ways to counter it, that is more troubling than either one of them looking at it independently," Galbreath said.

One former senior U.S. military space official noted that the concern cuts both ways. "We and our allies will likely have similar concerns and discussions when China fields its Starlink-like constellation in the next few years, which certainly would have military applications," the official said. "Such capabilities are becoming more important, necessary, and critical to modern warfare."

China is advancing toward that capability. The country recovered its first reusable orbital-class rocket booster following a launch earlier this month — a step that analysts say could meaningfully accelerate China's satellite deployment cadence and bring a large-scale Chinese mega-constellation closer to reality.

The question of whether commercial satellites used for military purposes constitute legitimate targets under international law has grown more urgent as the conflict in Ukraine has continued. Russia's deputy foreign ministry director Konstantin Vorontsov said in 2022 that Western commercial satellites supporting Ukraine established "an extremely dangerous trend," arguing their wartime use effectively rendered them military objectives. Tara Brown, a Royal Air Force officer and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, reached a similar conclusion in a 2022 paper published by the Lieber Institute at West Point, writing that nations must be "cognizant of the risk of commercial satellite systems becoming valid military objectives."

With China's reusable launch program maturing and the sixth China-Russia military cooperation forum approaching, analysts say the pace of counter-Starlink development is unlikely to slow — raising the stakes for how the United States and its allies plan to defend increasingly indispensable commercial space assets.